


The Shape of Things to Come

by glittergritted



Series: Ashla [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Hostage Situations, Implied/Referenced Parent Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, Mutilation, Politics, Psychological Torture, Rebellion, Riots, Sexual Violence, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:19:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittergritted/pseuds/glittergritted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- 22 BBY -</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> The original characters Rein Li Vale, Tylan Hart, Verena Solaris, Kaidin Vih'Torr, and Asrai'ev Kalar'aa are the intellectual property of my friends **Luca** , **Lexi** , and **Reyes** , respectively, and are being used in this work of fiction with their express permission.

Ixchel Erri had not yet changed into her sleeping clothes, running her hands over her face as the garments lay in a neatly folded pile on her bunk. Her thick black hair fell in messy, uneven waves down her shoulder blades, now free of the singular braid she favored for travel. She was dawdling as much as she could before submitting to sleep, despite how her eyes lastingly stung from her being awake since leaving Coruscant. She had piloted most of the four-day journey to the Jaraxes System; her master, Ardeth Brolen, thought that she would be better equipped than he to navigate the dense collection of gravity wells and star clusters along the particular route they had taken, despite her rank and age.  
  
Not that she had minded. Ixchel was a better starpilot than he, or many, could hope to be. In a cockpit was where she felt most at home, where there was no gravity holding her down and nothing but stars and endlessness around her. That, and the added excitement of maneuvering through the treacherousness of the quickest known route to the Jaraxes System provided needed distraction from her company. Ixchel didn’t dislike Ardeth, a Human man of gentle disposition, a vaguely esteemed Jedi Knight with a history in the Halls of Healing and a gray-brown thicket of hair atop his head with long sideburns that extended down to his jawline. But they both knew why he was there, and of whom he was there in lieu. Ardeth had tried time and time again to establish between himself and Ixchel the familial bond found between most masters and apprentices, but she was quick to shut him down every time; she was fine with him when it came to training sessions, the physicality of a lightsaber duel or a remote simulation the only way she could cope with learning from anyone but Trista Duran.  
  
Ixchel left the starship’s small bunkroom on impulse, her eyes noticeably less strained by the dim corridor light than that reflected off of the stark white walls of the bunkroom. She entered the kitchen and glanced at the local time on the inlaid chronometer: 0100. She made a face at herself as she opened a cabinet and pulled out a canister of powdered tea leaves. Their voyage had ended about a standard hour before, docking in the Cresta Spaceport on Ryidra free of charge thanks to their diplomatic purpose there.  
  
The Jaraxes System had been thrown gravely off-kilter by the Clone Wars, political and financial strife running rampant between its three worlds—Ryidra, Alsibah, and Danwui. In truth, they were all oversized moons rather than proper planets themselves, in orbit of a hulking and ancient crystalline world called Jaraxes, beautiful yet uninhabitable. Its surface was a pale lilac from space, and just slightly more vivid from the surface of its habitable moons. The entire system was in unanimous tentative favor for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, their manipulative and sweetened rhetoric shifting the Jaraxens’ views in their favor. Ardeth and Ixchel were tasked with bringing them back from the brink of declaring their independence and withdrawing their exportation of valuable starship fuel derived from crystals they harvested from Jaraxes.  
  
The details of the mission made Ixchel’s bleary eyes gloss over. Absentmindedly going through the motions of heating water and pouring it over the shallow mound of red tea she had deposited into a ceramic tumbler, Ixchel felt a juvenile restlessness despite her lassitude. She had grown tired of diplomatic assignments long ago. With their republic fighting a tumultuous, bloody war, sitting amid perfumed dignitaries as esteemed ambassadors of the Jedi Order, talking and dealing and peacemaking, seemed frivolous and wasteful. She wanted to be back in the seat of a Jedi starfighter again, not talking down a single system from abandoning the Republic.  
  
Ardeth manifested in the doorway of the kitchen, making Ixchel startle. He gave a soft chuckle, hands clasped behind his back. “It seems you’re having a lapse in vigilance, Ixchel.”  
  
It still grated her when he called her by her first name. She picked up the cup of finished tea and took a sip, ignoring the mild scald it inflicted upon her palate. “You try staying awake for four days straight,” she said, chestnut eyes casting him a glower. “See what it does to you.” Respect and formality were two things she typically lost when she was lacking proper rest.  
  
Trista had known that—she was even endeared by it—but Ardeth had yet to learn Ixchel’s facets and mannerisms, and his expression hardened at her remark. He pressed his lips into a thin line, his slightly pockmarked countenance losing some of its humor.  
  
“You really should be getting some sleep,” he told her, his Coruscanti accent thick. “We meet with Overseer Constance in five local hours.”  
  
Ixchel bit the inside of her cheek, adjusting her grip around the hot tumbler. “I know,” she said. “I’ve talked to more important people on less sleep than that.”  
  
Ardeth let out an impatient breath. “I know that it’s only been—”  
  
Ixchel cut off is words with her own, veering sharply away from the direction he wanted to go in, back to talk of the assignment. “I don’t know what’s so blasted important about Jaraxes, anyway. There are plenty of resources for fuel that have steadfast loyalty to the Republic already.” She took another sip of the tea, well aware of the emptiness of her own argument but letting the momentary heat of her manufactured grievance carry her through seconds immediately following.  
  
Ardeth stepped into the kitchen, moving his hands around to rest upon each other against his pelvis. “Don’t let your impatience cloud the importance of our assignment, Ixchel,” he said, arching his thin eyebrows. “Nor the emotion I’m sure it brings to—”  
  
She looked at him, gritting her teeth, and he stopped talking. Ixchel swallowed down the hot irritation, stubborn to let anything Ardeth said pass beyond the most shallow layers of her skin. “I’m not impatient,” she told him, lowering her voice. “I’m sick of being stuck in stuffy drawing rooms discussing the intricacies of intergalactic politics with people who’d rather fight for the Separatists, anyway.” Ixchel threw her free arm out, gesturing vaguely at the world beyond the ship’s bulkhead. She finished her tea with one large mouthful, wiped her lips on the tight cloth armband that covered her wrist, and set the cup down hard. “I’ll see you in the morning.”  
  
Ixchel slinked past her master, grass green tabards swishing against her thighs as she moved. She could feel Ardeth’s emotional pull in the Force as she locked the bunkroom door, but closed off her mind from his as though shutting a panel closed. He would doubtless be comming the Council to lament to them on her insubordination, but in the moment she couldn’t care, her throat dry and hot with agitation she gulped down as she undressed.  
  
_I know that it’s only been two years_ , he was going to say. As if any more time could pass and that would fill the emptiness any more quickly. They had been ill-matched from the start: the student Ardeth needed was one gentle-mannered and malleable, who had never lost anything, not one whose only figure for a mother the Force had taken away, and left behind a broken, jagged edge he couldn’t touch without cutting himself—if she didn’t lash out first.  
  
He would surely be contacting Yoda about her display right then. Ixchel yanked down the hem of her sleepshirt and ran her palms across the sides of her head, curling her fingers into her scalp. Her heart was beating too fast for her to fall asleep, and she still felt a sharpness in her stomach. Sooner or later, Ixchel would have to cleanse this outburst away, file it in a box in her mind with all the others and lock it away—pretend it was never there at all when Ardeth asked her about it in the morning, wanting to talk it over. She breathed slowly, methodically, like Rosalie had helped her practice. _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight._  
  
_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight._  
  
_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight._

* * *

At its darkest, Ryidra’s half-night was only a smoky dusk. The high concentration of small moons in the Jaraxes System and the reflectivity of Jaraxes itself made for too brightly lit an atmosphere to allow for true night, true darkness. In that regard, the Jaraxes System rang bells akin to the Hapes Cluster, though the limited eyesight in darkness was nowhere near as severe for Jaraxens as it was for Hapans. It almost made one feel ridiculous, stalking around in a half-night, lacking the adequate cover of pitch black. Disguising his own sense in the Force made him feel secure enough, but Enric felt paranoid pricks along the nape of his neck as long as he stood outside the Jedi starship, reaching into the boarding ramp’s internal mechanisms with the Force to will it open. Once inside, he stooped down to his haunches to glance outside: no one. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was the only one who had mastered the art of concealment, but could only roll his own eyes at himself when the lack of immediate senses in the Force outside of the ship had, indeed, proved accurate. He wasn’t a paranoid man, but the eagerness of a plan about to be enacted always instilled its own special brand of anxiousness, even inside Enric Kelrian.  
  
The _hiss_ and _thump_ of the boarding ramp closing and the pistons inside the bulkhead shifting stirred a presence in the Force. One that was not unfamiliar, but with which Enric was not as well acquainted as the one still sound asleep. Enric walked as though his boots were soled with cotton, soundless in his endeavor through the slim corridors. The layout of these simply designed starships utilized by the Jedi Order for unexciting diplomatic transit had nary changed a bit since last Enric had been inside one. The entrance to the cockpit was right where he estimated it would be, and the urgent, alert Force-user on the other side of the door was nearly ready to greet him—Ixchel Erri’s master, no doubt. Enric unsheathed his lightsaber and reached up to pull down his cowl. Luxurious fabric pooled around his neck, the satiny lining of his cloak catching the gentle overhead light.  
  
The door slid open and the Jedi came forth, igniting his blade but not going in for a swipe, simply forcing Enric further out into the hall as he extended his own blade of plasma, a grayscale contrast to this man’s half-meter of yellow-green. Enric favored him by standing at guard, their blades crossed in an X between them.  
  
“Who are you?” the Jedi asked, calm eyes concealing the bewildered panic of rising from slumber to find a darksider in your midst. Enric could feel it with ease, and smirked at the lightsider’s attempts at glossing over it with bravery.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Enric told him. A deft slash of his saber left Ardeth Brolen without his right hand, and before the limb _thudded_ on the deck Enric unsheathed a vibroblade from his left hip, slicing through the Jedi Knight’s fleshy side. Taking out the rapidly vibrating dagger splashed a swath of blood upon Enric’s knee, but more spilled onto the deck below their feet.  
  
The man fell to his knees, clutching his wound and bearing his white teeth.  
  
“You’ll survive,” Enric said, almost sounding bored, shaking the blood from the vibroblade and sliding it back in its holster. His lightsaber, too, retracted as he languidly clipped it onto its place upon his belt. “All the better that you live with how poor of a master you were to your Padawan today.” Chagrined with his prolonged consciousness, Enric bent over and pressed his thumb and forefinger to the base of the Jedi’s skull.  
  
Ardeth’s body fell limp against the hard, cold deck, blood trickling from the coagulating gash adjacent his abdomen. Enric lost interest in him quickly, visualizing the schematic of the ship in his head, looking down the gray-black corridor behind him and determining where he should go to find the bunkroom. Ixchel Erri’s deeply sleeping presence was a beacon that led him there, calm and unperturbed by the scuffle. It bemused him, how her sleep was utterly unaffected by her master’s distress, the ripples it created in the fabric of the Force failing to penetrate her mind. Enric had observed her long enough to determine as much as her apathy, her misplaced vexation. But to bare witness to their disconnect in person, rather than from across the galaxy like an observer of holofilm—it made him smile.  
  
The bunkroom door was locked—a physical clue of the pair’s palpable tension—but probing inside the mechanisms and opening the door was easy. Inside was pitch black, but he could see her perfectly. His near-silent footfalls as he approached the occupied cot brought him a tingling sense of familiarity, the residue of Rosalie Seeker upon the registry of her best friend adding to the sensation that made Enric’s breath hitch. In a flash, he saw that silver hair again, felt its softness between his fingers as though he were there on Alderaan again, softness matched by only that of the pale skin that accompanied it, supple with idle youth. Soft flesh torn into by his sharpness, cushioned and sheltered mind stained and ruined by his touch.  
  
Enric swallowed, breathing out an extended breath, biting into the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood to bring himself back to the present. He hadn’t savored that soft hair as much as he should have on Taliis Station, as much as he had craved to—a wasted opportunity he would be rectifying very soon.  
  
He took a handful of Ixchel’s dark, coarse hair and wrapped an arm about her chest, ripping her from beneath her covers and igniting her awareness in a stinging flash. Ixchel’s sharp gasp started to evolve into a scream, but Enric’s hand clamped around her mouth with bruising force. She threw out her hand and called one of her twin lightsabers from where they lay on the opposite bunk. Its pale yellow light illuminated the bunkroom with a loud _snap-hiss_ , in tandem with the Padawan’s hard shove with the Force, separating their bodies. A bastion of yellow plasma kept them apart as Enric watched her eyes search him, for an identifying factor beyond the thick, oily cloud of darkness that shaded his aura. As the haze of sleep left her, she tried to place him as a person she knew in vain hope what the Force was screaming at her was a nightmare. But when she couldn’t, her muscles steadied and her eyes hooded as she stared him down.  
  
He was impressed for a moment, but in a rush to move on. He reached out his hand and fought her grip upon her saber’s hilt, twisting her wrist and cramping her fingers without touching them. She let out a high-pitched wail as pain shot up her arm, and the lightsaber fell from her hand, clanking on the deck and deactivating. The room was sent into total darkness again, and Ixchel couldn’t move to protect herself again before she felt Enric’s hand clamp against the roots of her hair again, and an ice-cold static blade pressed into the crook of her neck. She silently called out to Ardeth as Enric forced her out of the room, but was greeted with the dead end of his unconsciousness.  
  
Enric dragged her light yet resistant body along with ease that surprised him, moving his hand from her hair to around her waist. They passed by the cockpit on their way to the boarding ramp, and Ixchel’s sense spiked with delightfully unexpected rage. Enric couldn’t help but smile against her ear at the contradiction: for all of the girl’s distance from the dark side, the capacity for anger glowed brightly inside of her.  
  
“Ardeth!” she called out, the name scraping against her throat with the effort she poured into summoning him from sleep.  
  
He briefly lowered his dagger from her throat to thumb the release for the boarding ramp. She bucked against him in the momentary freedom of her upper body, but he shoved her hard against his chest with a reach in the Force, holding her there with fingers digging into her rib cage. The boarding ramp lowered, letting in a cool breeze that raised bumps along Ixchel’s exposed legs.  
  
“What do you want?” she asked. Her shallow breathing made her voice sound small.  
  
The floors of the Cresta Spaceport were slick and shiny, shockingly cold against the bare soles of Ixchel’s feet. The open air of the docking bay further served to chill her down to the bone, the dark side enveloping her from all sides no longer alone. Enric didn’t answer her question until they were in the empty stretch of hallway, soulless and fluorescently lit.  
  
He held her against his side now, walking more quickly to the bay he had docked in earlier that night. He could sense her fear, distinct and delicious. “Don’t worry,” he said, smirking just so, “I don’t want you.”


	2. two.

The metallic exterior of the J-type star skiff was a painted over with a matte gray; none of the half-night’s bright moonlight reflecting off of its hull. It would have looked to Ixchel like a stealth craft, if not for the distinctively _royal_ silhouette of its body. Only Naboo dignitaries were known to sport ships like that, or important figures from other worlds wealthy enough to pay for one. Or, alternatively, gamblers who won them and thieves who stole them. Ixchel couldn’t decide which her captor was, only that he was certainly one of the two. Blinking her eyes up at the dulled paint job of the star skiff, the model’s resplendent esteem lowered greatly by its uninteresting matte finish, she thought the paint job was befitting of the man who still held her in a vice grip against his solid, muscular torso—as much as she could tell of him, anyway: he didn’t want to draw anyone’s eyes, but his movements and attitude were ostentatious and proud, as though he wouldn’t _really_ mind if someone caught a peek.  
  
Ixchel gritted her teeth hard as he pushed her up the boarding ramp and up a short metal staircase. Ixchel tripped on the top step and fell forward, seething as Enric’s grip reached around her stomach to catch her. She instinctively grabbed at his hand for support as he continued on wordlessly, pressing the release for the double doors before them as she steadied her footing on the wide landing. The pads of her fingers brushed against the dorsal of his hand, leathery and rough and uneven. She looked down, catching a glimpse of a long-healed burn that stretched down his fingers and up beneath the cuff of his sleeve, and curled around toward his palm. Before she could think about what could burn a man like that, the doors slid open with a swift _whoosh_ , revealing the abbreviated audience chamber standard for diplomatic barges. The walls shone with opalescence, lined with pristine white benches cushioned in faded red-orange upholstery. Clicking along the starry dark gray flooring were a pair of well-worn black boots, attached to yet another unfamiliar darkness in the Force.  
  
“Who are you?” Ixchel asked.  
  
Enric let go of her waist and rested his hand on her shoulder, the weight of which she urged to shrug off. A wave of the young man’s hair fell in front of his left eye as he dipped his head to focus on the binders. He locked them tightly around Ixchel’s wrists, the process moving too quickly for her to get a grasp on and take control of.  
  
“My name is Mykal,” the man said, looking up and meeting her eyes. He spoke like a concierge, neutral and professional with an air of affected friendliness. But it couldn’t even be called _friendliness_ , not really. His watery gray eyes flicked up, thick-set brows perking slightly. Ixchel could feel their aura of companionship, the emotional history that hung between them, but Mykal’s expression and sense were both tightly wound, like durasteel coils—and even tighter when he looked up at him. “Obviously, you’ve met Enric already.”  
  
“You know, that doesn’t really answer my question,” Ixchel snapped, jerking her arms.  
  
Mykal nodded, leading Ixchel away from Enric and gently sitting her down on one of the benches. Ixchel looked between both men, catching on quickly. Master and apprentice—made evident by, if nothing else, the way even Enric’s cursory glance toward Mykal as the latter backed away from Ixchel with dutifully clasped his hands exemplified his dominance.  
  
“I _asked_ you what you _want_.” Ixchel pretended to struggle against her binds, chafing her skin against the cold metallic material.  
  
“I know you did,” Enric said, voice lower and softer than it had been before. Looking up at him, Ixchel felt the warmth leave her core. She hadn’t been able to see them when all the light that cast upon his face was thin and dim, but in the brightness of the star skiff’s interior his eyes stood out like stars. Pale, milky blue, washed out, almost like the eyes of a blind man but seeing everything, cataloging every minute twitch of her face. Under their potent gaze, Ixchel felt her bite leave her.  
  
“We’ll be back in the Core Worlds soon,” he said, airily, as though he hadn’t been burrowing sharp, unseen hooks into her a moment ago. “There’s an avenue back there just off the Perlemian Trade Route. Much quicker than the way you came.”  
  
The casuality with which he spoke gave Ixchel pause. A deep crease formed between her eyebrows. “The _way I came_ is the fastest one there is. How do you even know how I got here?” Ixchel tried to swallow, but her throat was desert-dry. “How do you even know _me_?”  
  
Enric smiled with half of his mouth, pale lips parting slightly. In the bright room, it struck Ixchel how vibrant the thick, gently wavy hair atop his head was— _red_ , with tones of orange and bronze that caught the light depending on how he turned his head. He must be near-Human, she thought, with coloration like that—and those eyes. But perhaps the harsh, hard chill that greeted her when she reached out in the Force, barely an inch, just to see, was what made her think that. _Inhuman_ was the only word that did that feeling justice.  
  
“Mykal, get her some water, would you?” Enric turned to face his apprentice, who nodded in response. “Maybe a ration bar or two.” He set his eyes on Ixchel in a lasting glance, narrowing them the barest millimeter. She felt a strange, amorphous wave in the Force, a gentle, almost imperceptible invasion of her personal space. Enric looked back to Mykal, feigning concern. “It’s been a long time since she’s eaten.”  
  
Enric exited the room, twin doors sliding shut behind him.  
  
Ixchel’s lips dropped apart, her wrists going slack in their restraints. “Blast it.” She ground the words out through her teeth, tensing her muscles again and closing her eyes. When she heard Mykal’s feet start to move, she said, “I don’t want water. I don’t want _anything_ , I don’t want _shit_ , I just want to know what you’re doing!”  
  
Mykal stopped, sighing a long breath through his nose. A mixture of agitation and pity swirled in his aura. Ixchel’s brow furrowed again. “I’m not doing anything,” Mykal said, just above a whisper. His voice held an august Core Worlds accent, immeasurably softer than his counterpart’s austere intonation. “I’ll get you those rations.”  
  
Ixchel watched him disappear into a compact room off of the audience chamber, most likely a galley. The weight of Enric’s immediate presence had been lifted, but Ixchel yet felt a vague reluctance to stand up, like something bad would happen if she did. In her thin sleep shirt and cloth shorts that barely covered the bottoms of her thighs, she felt exposed and inadequately protected. She had the Force, but the looseness of the synthetic fibers of her sleep clothes were a detriment to her assuredness of her own self-defense capabilities. That, and the fact that both of her lightsabers were still aboard her and Ardeth’s vessel, along with the vibroblades she kept snug in the wrappings of her boots. She flexed her feet, all too conscious of their unadornment.  
  
Mykal returned to the audience chamber with two rectangular bars wrapped in silver foil, and a slender glass of what Ixchel assumed to be water. He placed them at the end of a long, narrow caf table to Ixchel’s left. To her chagrin, her stomach stirred eagerly at the sight of food.  
  
“You don’t have to have it,” Mykal said, straightening up and gesturing to the refreshments, “but hostage situations are always easier on a full stomach.”  
  
The way he spoke threw her off, eyes turning away from the rations and up to look at his face again. His words were flavored with a dry humor, underscored in its sardonicism by the deeply shadowed circles underneath his eyes, and the whisper of a half-smirk on his thin lips. He was relating to her, not antagonizing her.  
  
Ixchel swallowed, shifting uneasily in her seat. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess.”  
  
As he moved toward the doors and reached to open them, Ixchel called, “Wait a second.”  
  
Mykal’s arm dropped halfway to his side, the soft brushing of his dark maroon robes audible in the tomblike silence around them, just above the humming of the star skiff’s warming engines. He turned around, his eyebrows lifting marginally in an invitation to speak.  
  
“You said _you’re_ not doing anything,” Ixchel said, quietly. “But obviously you’re involved in…whatever this is—” She raised up her bound hands in example. “—so what the hell does that mean?”  
  
Mykal’s eyes fell to the deck for a moment. When they looked back at Ixchel, there was a deep-seated knowledge behind the strangely sad slate blue tones.  
  
Before he could answer, Ixchel added, “And he said he doesn’t even want me.” Her voice grew urgent as she felt the familiar tremor of the ship’s repulsorlifts firing up. “What does _that_ mean?”  
  
Mykal’s head dipped downward and to the left, and his body language grew tense. Ixchel ground her teeth as she felt the unseen tug on Mykal’s body toward the cockpit. The pilot needed his co-pilot. He pressed the release for the doors, looking back at Ixchel as he walked in-between them. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I am.” He looked up toward where the cockpit sat above them, and he shifted the tones of his sense around like clay, willing his imprint in the Force to betray his rueful words to her. Ixchel only noticed the change after it happened, widening her eyes at the deceptive discrepancy. “You shouldn’t worry for yourself; it isn’t about you.”  
  
Saying no more, he left hastily. Ixchel could see his figure stop before a turbolift on the left-hand side of the corridor before the doors slid shut again.  
  
Blinking at the solid light gray of the double doors, Ixchel waited until she could feel Mykal’s presence move into the cockpit, alongside Enric’s, before she manipulated the lock on the binders to open, the Force dropping the cuffs hard onto her lap. Ixchel threw them onto her seat as she stood up, rubbing at her bony wrists. _Does he think Jedi don’t know how to open locks?_  
  
She walked over to the caf table and picked up one of the ration bars, thoroughly inspecting the integrity of the wrapper before ripping it open and taking a bite. Urgency surged through her system as she reached out to Ardeth again, finding only his injured, unconscious body still prone and unmoving. His life force was strong, but it would be a long time before he woke up. Ixchel chewed hard and angrily, rejecting the water provided for her.  
  
She had neglected to ask how this man supposed _his_ way back to the Core Worlds was faster than how she’d come—never mind how he knew the way she’d come in the first place. Did many darksiders slither around the galaxy getting top-of-the-line hyperdrives for their illicitly acquired starships? This one must have. The four-day trip was made on a respectable hyperdrive, not admirable but not bad, either. She could vividly picture him shoving a dagger halfway into some sucker’s skin to get a masterfully fast hypderdrive free of charge—or killing someone for one altogether. She imagined he made most of his purchases in blood, rather than in credits.

* * *

The Jedi High Council sat in a perfect circle, lit by the cottony light of early morning. At the center of them was a grainy, blue-tinted hologram of Ardeth Brolen, groggy and battered. A dark splotch recognized by all present as a bloodstain spread across the majority of his lower torso. He looked like he had been crying.  
  
“Ardeth.” The deep, gravelly tones of Mace Windu’s voice rang out thickly through the Council Chamber. “We received your distress signal early this morning; a scouting team in the area will be at your position within Ryidra’s local day.” Mace waited a beat to allow for a response, but the silence remained unfilled. “What happened?”  
  
“Ixchel,” Ardeth said, shaking his head, looking down at his feet rather than the Jedi Masters. “Someone took her last night.”  
  
“ _Took_ her?” chimed in Obi-Wan Kenobi, concern adding gravity to his melodic voice.  
  
“I don’t know who it was,” Ardeth continued, stiffening his resolve and straightening his back. “But he was of the dark side, masters. Cold, and evil. Colder than anyone I’ve ever felt before. It was like—like he had no presence in the Force at all, until it was too late. No more than a corpse.”  
  
The masters looked between one another, exchanging long glances and communicating without the need for the spoken word. Several council members were present only in the form of hologram, blue semi-transparent images of themselves, off on assignment with an apprentice or on stationed duty elsewhere in the galaxy. One year into the Great Clone War, it had been a long time since every member of he High Council could gather in-person at once.  
  
Grand Master Yoda shook his head, scrunching up his wizened green face in thought. He grunted softly from his seat at the apex of the circle, his shock of thin white hair backlit by the post-dawn light. All gazes turned to him. “Padawan Erri is in danger,” he confirmed. “I feel it.”  
  
“This man,” Mace said. “He could use the Force?”  
  
“Yes, Master Windu,” Ardeth said, heavy lids closing over his eyes. “That must have been how he could hide himself. But I know he was no Jedi; there was no light in him at all.”  
  
The fleshy tendrils of Adi Gallia’s headdress fell over one shoulder as she ponderously rubbed her chin. “The Sith have been gone for years.”  
  
“A Dark Jedi, perhaps,” said Shaak Ti, her soft voice slightly hesitant.  
  
“A fallen Jedi?” Obi-Wan asked, not argumentatively.  
  
“Not necessarily,” Shaak Ti said back. “Typically, yes, but—”  
  
“It makes sense,” Ardeth said, raising his head again with considerable effort. His face in the hologram was a paler shade of blue. “He had a lightsaber. A gray one; he must have made it himself, or at least knew how to modify the crystals.”  
  
The long moment of thoughtful silence that ensued weighed heavily on all the masters’ minds. Hearing of a Jedi turned to the dark side was—unfortunately—not uncommon, but to hear of one being so bold as to kidnap a Padawan Learner was a scary thing.  
  
“But you didn’t recognize him?” Mace asked. He leaned forward and laced his fingers together just underneath his chin.  
  
“No. No, I didn’t.” Ardeth’s hologram rubbed at where his since-healed wound had been. “In better light, perhaps I could have. He didn’t seem old enough to be forgotten by now, if he was ever in the Order at all.”  
  
“Did he give any indication as to his intentions?” Obi-Wan ventured.  
  
“No, Master Kenobi.” Ardeth looked off at something invisible to the Council, his chest heaving in a sigh. “I’ve failed her. In every sense of the word I…I failed her.”  
  
“Suspend your mission, Knight Brolen,” said Yoda, folding his hands upon his lap. “Return home, you must. We will—”  
  
Two sequential _beeps_ came from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s utility belt. All conversational halted, and the Stewjon Jedi blinked in surprise: he always turned off his comlink before entering Council meetings. He removed the device from its clasp, sitting up as he read the words blinking on the small screen: INCOMING HOLOMESSAGE.

* * *

“You’re gonna have to do better than that!”  
  
Verena’s taunt drew Tylan’s glare, and earned Rosalie’s laugh. The latter tipped up her water bottle and took a drink, sharing a look with the woman beside her as she wiped her lips with the back of her thumb. Rosalie and her master, Rein Li Vale, were taking a break from training, having started especially early that morning, before everyone else. Their eyes didn’t quite meet like they used to, but the sentiment was always there.  
  
Alluria Tu’Lira and Lucius Demora, Tylan Hart and Verena Solaris’ respective masters, smiled in amusement as they stood off to the side, watching their Padawans duel in the center of the vast training hall. Occasionally, they spoke lowly to one another, tilting their heads and clandestinely exchanging notes while their apprentices battled it out. Their lightsabers were turned down to their lowest setting, as per training regulations, so they would only give each other first-degree burns if things got too personal—an eventuality that, as far as Rosalie was concerned, was nary too far off.  
  
“Do you have any classes today?” Rein asked, unseeing eyes cast toward the duel.  
  
Rosalie swallowed another sip of water, resting her head on the wall behind her. The pair sat in one of the training hall’s tall, open windows, the cityscape of Coruscant stretching out into the horizon behind them. “None today. After lunch, I’ll probably just be holed up in the Archives.”  
  
Rein smiled knowingly, turning her head to face her apprentice. “Really?”  
  
Rosalie ran her tongue over the top row of her teeth, tightly screwing the cap back on her water as she gave Rein a hard—though good-humored—glare. “Really.”  
  
“You say that like I don’t know that there are ways Shadows can receive comms on assignment.” Rein spoke casually, her expression lending nothing to her mischievousness.  
  
Rosalie batted at Rein’s knee, looking out into the hall again, biting her lip to stifle a smile. “I’m saying that like _they_ don’t know.” Normally talk of her relationship in such close vicinity of her unbeknownst friends would make her nervous, but at the moment neither of them seemed likely to notice anything beyond the immediate reach of their blades.  
  
“All right,” Rein said, nodding as she extended her attention back toward Verena and Tylan. The barest hint of a smirk canted up one side of her mouth. “Make sure to tell him hello for me.”  
  
“Stop it,” Rosalie laughed, folding her arm and resting the opposite elbow upon it, disguising her simper with the casual rest of her loosely curled fingers over her lips. “You enjoy this too much.”  
  
Rein chuckled quietly, tapping Rosalie’s knee in return. “Entirely too much.”  
  
The affable mood of the training hall dampened with the introduction of Obi-Wan Kenobi. His instantaneously recognizable figure entered through the hall’s arching doorway, his face grim and stricken. Verena and Tylan halted in their actions, disengaging their lightsabers and looking back at their friend in confusion. Usually, the sight of Obi-Wan would be welcome and warming, but the intangible feeling of dread he brought with him this time invoked worry.  
  
“Master Kenobi,” Rosalie said, standing up and walking to stand between her friends, Rein right beside her. Rosalie felt more of a connection to him than any of the other Jedi Masters who had welcomed her into the Order eight years before, even Yoda, who had personally instructed her countless times. The gentleness with which Obi-Wan regarded her, less like a porcelain doll and more like a person, brought an air of paternity to their relationship Rosalie coveted. “What’s wrong?”  
  
The conversation drew Alluria and Lucius closer, as well. “Is everything all right?” asked the former.  
  
Obi-Wan drew a silent breath, not necessarily pleased with the large crowd but feeling too urgent to wait until he could ask for a smaller audience. “Rosalie,” he started, drawing her eyes to his. Big and youthful and vibrant, her eyes were where whatever she was feeling inside was plainly visible, to those who knew how to look. Privy to the worry gnawing inside of Obi-Wan’s chest, a matching sensation developed within her. “Ixchel’s master contacted the Council this morning. What he told us was very alarming.”  
  
Rosalie folded her arms tightly, as though she was pressing down the nausea sprouting in her stomach. “Is she in trouble?” A supportive hand rested against Rosalie’s shoulder blade—Rein’s.  
  
Obi-Wan hesitated, holding a datapad in both hands. He had transferred the file containing the holomessage there, for the sake of a larger screen upon which to view the startling, familiar visage. “I received a message from someone not long after Ardeth Brolen contacted us. I’m still not sure how he got my contact frequency, but—I think it would be easier just to show you the message.”  
  
Rosalie nodded, shifting her stance.  
  
“Why just Rosalie?” Verena asked, impatiently shaking her head. “We’re all Ixchel’s friends, what’s wrong with her?”  
  
Obi-Wan only glanced at her, and nodded down at the datapad as he handed it to Rosalie. “Radiation interference marred the image slightly, but tell me if you’re able to recognize him.”  
  
Awful suspicion made Rosalie’s hands stop in the space between her person and the datapad like stone, but she steeled herself and took it, anyway. She queued up the holomessage and pressed play, looking up at Obi-Wan expectantly as it loaded. The voice that spoke to her yanked her eyes back down to the screen, her blood freezing over at the face that greeted her. She pressed one hand against her stomach, and every muscle in her body turned to water.  
  
“I assume this is still Obi-Wan Kenobi’s comm frequency, if I’m remembering it correctly. If it isn’t, I apologize, but I’m sure whoever you are, you can understand where this message needs to get and make sure it gets there,” said Enric Kelrian, expression easy and calm, smiling in a subtle, amiable way with closed lips. Rosalie drew back, her mouth falling open. “My name is Enric Kelrian, and I’d like to address Rosalie Seeker, if you’d be kind enough to show her this message, Obi-Wan. I imagine that you will, at some point, so.” Enric’s smile creeped into a smirk as he looked down and adjusted something off-screen—a smirk he seemed to save just for her, the only constant horror in the nightmares he crafted for her. He leaned forward in his chair—the pilot’s chair of a starship—just enough to make Rosalie pull back even farther. Rein’s hand moved up to her shoulder. The radiation-damaged picture did nothing to conceal nor disguise his countenance from her. To her, that face was as clear as the day she had seen it for the first time.  
  
“Your friend Ixchel is fine. A bit bewildered, but she’s fine. If you ever see her again, you’d do well to tell her how important it is to follow orders: generally, when someone puts you in binders, they want you to _stay_ in those binders.” Enric looked off-screen again, this time to his right, toward where the copilot’s chair must have been. _If_. Rosalie’s fingernails dug into the palm of her free hand, creating little red half-moons. She forgot about everyone else around her, their senses fading away from recognition. “If you do want her back home in the Temple safe and sound, which I’m sure you do,” Enric continued, looking back, “then you just need to do one thing for me. I want you to meet me in docking bay seven of the Kit-Cha Space Station in the Zaladra System by the end of tomorrow. I’ll attach the coordinates to this message; it’s only a five-hour endeavor from Coruscant. You can bring your master, and your friends if you want. Bring whomever you like, because I know they won’t do anything. I’ll let Ixchel go, and you’ll come with me.”  
  
The datapad nearly slipped out of Rosalie’s hand. She steadied her grip by holding onto it with both hands, practically bending its plasteel casing. Acrid bile rose in her throat.  
  
“It’s up to you. It really is your choice,” he said. He paused, his smirk unending as he turned slightly, gesturing to his right. Ixchel moved slowly into the frame, her body only visible up to her chest. Enric reached up behind her head and laced his fingers in her hair, pulling her down so her face was in frame. She winced hard and supported herself by her binder-laden hands on the chair’s armrest.  
  
Rosalie’s skin flushed hot, the edges of her vision tinted dark and blurry. Beside Ixchel’s right eye blossomed a deep, mottled bruise, with a matching one down beside her mouth. Through the grainy footage, Rosalie saw a trickle of blood coming down from her friend’s left eyebrow, trailing down over her eyelid. Ixchel looked into the recorder, eyes wide and dewy.  
  
“It can happen two ways, you see: you can come willingly with no trouble, and Ixchel will be fine, and that’ll be the end of it. But if you don’t, she’ll stay with me until I take you some other way. And when I get you, you’ll watch me hurt her worse than you care to imagine.” Enric chuckled to himself, looking over at Ixchel and flexing his fingers against her scalp. “I’ll spare you the details now; I don’t want to spoil anything. Then I’ll kill her, and you’ll be there for that, too. I’ll send her body back to the Temple, though, so she can at least have a proper funeral after her _best friend_ got her killed.” As Enric looked back at the lens of the recorder, he tightened his grip. “It’s going to happen either way, Rosalie. This is just my way of giving you an option that’s easier for everyone. Once again: it’s entirely up to you.”  
  
Ixchel’s eyes were off somewhere else, distant and pained. Through the two-dimensional screen, Rosalie could feel the terror radiating off of Ixchel’s trembling shoulders.  
  
“You have until the end of tomorrow. Don’t make this hard on her,” Enric said, his voice buttery with feigned consternation.  
  
The datapad went dark, and the clouds in Rosalie’s perception lifted. As her hands went limp around the device Obi-Wan caught it, relieving her of the burden. Suddenly the air around her felt thick and unbreathable, dampness pooling in her eyes and blurring the room. She must have looked faint, for Tylan wrapped both of his hands around her right arm and shoulder to steady her.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Verena asked, cutting through the silence, looking at everyone’s face in turn for an answer. She rested on Rosalie, fear swelling within her as the group’s reticence drew on.  
  
It was jarring, coming back to her senses and feeling everyone’s anxiousness penetrate her.  
  
“Rosalie, what’s going on?” Tylan asked, more gentle-toned than Verena but just as heated. “Who was that?”  
  
Rosalie looked at Obi-Wan, closing her lips together. “I know him.”  
  
Obi-Wan nodded his head, holding her gaze for a long time. “So do I.”


	3. three.

“Masters, I have to go.” Rosalie’s voice was thickened by the hard lump in her throat. Her red-rimmed eyes looked at every Jedi Master in the Council in turn, as though the answer was obvious. “What else is there to do?”  
  
Rein stood beside her, front teeth biting softly into the flesh of her lower lip. She clasped her half-gloved hands, looking over at her apprentice. It was all she could to do try and extend some comfort Rosalie’s way, an invisible, whilst warming, blanket. But the offer was met with hot, impenetrable fear she couldn’t touch. It unnerved her.  
  
Obi-Wan leaned forward in his chair, pale fingers laced together tightly. “I know that seems like the only option. But there must be something else we can do.”  
  
Mace Windu cut in harshly. “Padawan Seeker,” he said, drawing her wet eyes to him, “you must find your center, and _calm down_. How could you even suggest handing yourself over to a Dark Jedi?”  
  
Rosalie sighed, shutting her eyes and bringing her hands up in front of her sternum, wringing them hard. She could only bring herself to shake her head, opening her eyes again and looking at Mace dead-on, shrugging her shoulders. “You said you’ve known him—all of you said that—you know how dangerous he is.”  
  
“Which is exactly why,” Mace said, slowing down the pace of his speech, as though he were addressing a youngling, “we can’t let you get involved.”  
  
“That’s exactly why I _have_ to be involved,” Rosalie shot back, raising her voice. She splayed her hands, at a loss, as the circle of masters eyed her carefully. "I already am."  
  
Before Rosalie could continue, Yoda clicked his tongue. “A Padawan, Kelrian was. Long ago. Seduced by the dark side before he reached knighthood. What would he want with you, I’m wondering.”  
  
Rosalie found herself silenced, gnawing on the inside of her cheek to keep the pain inside of her chest at bay.  
  
“Isn’t it obvious?” Obi-Wan asked gently. “She is the Chosen One. Frankly, it’s a wonder a ransom like this hasn’t been demanded before.”  
  
“Darksiders are never this bold,” Adi Gallia said. She bobbed her head allowingly. “Bold, yes, but enough so to send a comm like that to the Jedi Council?”  
  
“With due respect,” Rein said, drawing attention back to the center of the room, “this darksider in particular is…an anomaly in many ways.”  
  
“ _You_ know him, Knight Vale?” asked Mace, raising his brow.  
  
“Not personally,” she answered. “I only know what Rosalie has told me.”  
  
Rosalie breathed a long, calculated breath, dropping her eyes to the marble beneath her boots. She could feel the eyes on her digging into her skin like the tips of vibroblades. She pressed her thumb hard on the knuckle of her forefinger as she looked up to meet Obi-Wan’s expectant eyes.  
  
“We never did get around to discussing how exactly you and this man knew one another,” he said. Rosalie could feel him forcing the words past a resistant wall of reticence. “He was a Jedi at a time, yes, but long before you were even born.”  
  
“I, ah…” Rosalie looked out through the spanning window. Coruscant’s skyline glowed beneath its artificially enhanced sunlight, metallic exteriors of skyscrapers reflecting the light and bouncing it off of the shiny shells of speeders, criss-crossing in unseen air traffic lanes high above. In that moment, she longed for the fresh air those speeders cut through. There was no reason to be scared to give the honest answer, or anything alike. Everyone in that room knew why she was in the Jedi Order, despite what her parents had done to keep her from it. Anyone could know, but the fact of the matter was extraordinarily few within the Order even bothered to look up the pasts and histories of their peers on the HoloNet, given the likelihood that no one there had any pre-Order histories to dig into at all.  
  
But she surely did—she had seen the articles herself, once.  
  
Talking about it at all, thinking about it, acknowledging that it happened and that it was real—that was what stabbed at her heart and lengthened the silence in the room. It hung over them all like a woolen hide soaked in water, and Obi-Wan could have sworn he had an idea of what the answer was before she spoke it. They all could.  
  
“He was the one,” Rosalie said, shoving the words out past the tightness of her throat. Moisture pooled in her eyes and she closed them, angling her head down again until the tears went away. There was a shift in the Force, a gentle cant of the room into a grim understanding. Rein’s hand found Rosalie’s shoulder blade, finger pads pressing into the fabric of her robes.  
  
“The man who orphaned you?” Mace Windu asked.  
  
Rosalie faltered at his clinical, ungentle wording. She looked over at him, dry-eyed. “Yes,” she said, pointedly. “That one.”  
  
There was a universal air of disapproval at Rosalie’s show of emotion, but no one raised the subject just then.  
  
“This is,” Obi-Wan said, pausing long between words, tapping the tips of his fingers on his armrest, “disturbing. Has Enric Kelrian ever contacted you before?” _Since you left Alderaan_ were the unspoken words he left out of his question. Any talk of her homeworld, he knew, would rile his fellow Jedi Masters more so than they already had been.  
  
Rein’s hand gently rubbed the muscle beside Rosalie’s spine in response to the spike in the latter’s disquiet. Rosalie gritted her teeth, leveling out her breathing with great effort. She only looked at Obi-Wan, finding comfort in holding his eyes, as opposed to the others staring her down. The only cushion in a room with a duracrete floor—save for Rein, whose eyes had angled toward her apprentice, sorrowful behind a practiced mask of controlled concern.  
  
Enric had never given Rosalie a reprieve. Perhaps for a week or more, now and then, her dreams would be free of him, her mind utterly weightless when he wasn’t lurking just behind her every thought. But those were special occasions, rare and never lasting long enough. It was as though they were attached by a link that reached across the galaxy, a durasteel cord Rosalie couldn’t hope to break if she tried. Maybe after all that time he had spent inside of her mind, cataloging her feelings and the nuances of her thoughts, it would be impossible for him to get free of that link if _he_ wanted to. Even then, standing there in the Council Chamber, his suffocating, parasitic presence lingered on the edge of Rosalie’s consciousness. He was watching her, listening in on not only her words but her considerations _of_ those words, ceaselessly, like the act of peering into her being was a drug as potent as death sticks. It was that presence that kept her silent, the probing fingers of the extension of Enric’s mind unto hers stopping her answer before it came out. If she were to tell them, let them in on the connection Enric had forced upon her, it would do no one any good.  
  
If the Council knew, they would surely have viewed it as her keeping contact with a darksider, and keeping it a deliberate secret, at that. As though she would let him stay if she had the choice, the power, to make him stop. She had never even brought herself to tell Rein that he kept himself so close, for if she weren’t worried about indicting herself of a breach in the Jedi Code, she couldn’t dare put Rein in the line of fire by being privy to that horrible intimacy. Neither she, nor anyone.  
  
“We shouldn’t still be discussing this.”  
  
Mace Windu’s voice broke the silence like a shattering wave. He was impatient, as they all were, to get Ixchel Erri back home safely. How they were to do that, he had already formed an idea. “Padawan Seeker,” he said, “we simply cannot allow you to put yourself in danger like this. We’ll send a team out to the Zaladra System and see—”  
  
“No,” Rosalie said, interrupting his poised attempt at finalizing the decision. “If I don’t go there myself, Ixchel _will_ die. You all watched the tape; you know that’s what’s going to happen.”  
  
“Rosalie,” Rein started, her voice warning caution.  
  
“No,” Rosalie told her, as well, though gentler this time. She lay her hand upon her master’s arm for a brief moment before stepping forward, closer to Mace’s chair in particular. “I’m going. This isn’t anyone’s responsibility but mine. You can throw me in the detention center for insubordination if you want, but you know you’ll only be killing Ixchel if you do.”  
  
“Padawan Seeker,” Adi Gallia said, visibly bristled. She was quiet for a moment, breathing hard but evenly. “Knight Vale. I’m sure you’ll be more than happy to tell your apprentice that this display of _recklessness_ is wholly unbefitting. And that this is no decision of hers.”  
  
Rein wet her lips, flickering green-blue hues between the senses of each master within her immediate range. They rested upon Rosalie in the end. Rein walked forward the couple of steps to be at her side again. “Reckless, yes. I don’t want Rosalie in the company of a Dark Jedi more than any of you do.” Inside, she felt torn. The urge to protect the girl to her right would normally outweigh all else in a situation like this; Rein would be the first to help hide her away from the darkness that haunted her. But she resigned herself to the clear option. The outcome didn’t have to be the one demanded of them, but there was only one way their response could start. “But it was made very clear what will happen if she doesn’t. I don’t believe this is a matter the Jedi Order as a whole can see to.”  
  
Mace Windu remained stone-still, but his deep-set eyes moved between both young women before him, disbelieving. “You speak of letting a member of the Jedi Order give herself over a Dark Jedi.”  
  
“I don’t,” Rein replied. “I speak of Rosalie meeting him in-person, as he asked. I’ll go with her, and others, too, if the Council wishes. If Enric Kelrian leaves the Zaladra System at all, he’ll have neither Rosalie nor Padawan Erri in his hands.”  
  
Rosalie looked over at her, her doubt burning hot and clear. She nodded despite herself when the Council asked if she agreed with her mentor, despite what she knew, what she was already preparing herself for. As she stood there, heart beating hard—too hard—against the avian-hollow structure of her ribs, Rosalie knew that Rein was wrong this time. Rosalie had told her of Enric before, to an extent: what he was like as a phantom inside her head, what he had done, what he had made it clear that he’d like to do, but even Rosalie herself had only seen the man face-to-face twice, the nightmarish culmination of less than twenty standard minutes. Even she didn’t know what he was like as another being in the flesh, not really, not beyond what it was like to be pinned down beneath his strength. She didn’t know what to expect when he was negotiating for something he wanted—badly, greedily, enough to kill whomever stood in his way of getting it, doubtless.  
  
But those weren’t concerns to raise to the Council. Perhaps in sooth they were, but what good would it do, when the Force was as alight with conflict as it was?  
  
“Knight Vale is a Shadow,” Obi-Wan said to his peers. “She is trained in dealings with the dark side and those who use it.” He paused briefly, averting his eyes downward in thought. “If anyone is equipped to handle this, I believe she is.”  
  
“Fine,” Mace allowed. “But I do hope you’re not telling me that it’s a good idea to send Padawan Seeker on a mission to confront this person. And I expect I don’t have to explain _why_ it isn’t, Kenobi.”  
  
“If he means what he says,” Obi-Wan said, leveling his gaze with Mace’s, “which I’m inclined to believe, then it’s our only choice. I would rather Rosalie confront this situation by her master’s side than run off by herself without our knowledge—not that I would expect such a thing of her, but—”  
  
“Inclined to believe the word of a darksider?”  
  
Obi-Wan’s sense in the Force tightened with impatience. If he had been less practiced in concealment, his expression would have broken into astoundment. “We’ve all watched the message—multiple times.”  
  
The upward slant to Rosalie’s lips couldn’t be helped, but was quickly snuffed out when attention turned back to her. A swell of gratitude made her chest feel crowded.  
  
“A special circumstance, this is,” said Yoda. The nod he gave had an air of finality that made Mace Windu’s hackles rise higher. “Go, you will, and bring Padawan Erri back safely. And you, too, Padawan Seeker, must return. Do not give in to the wishes of this Dark Jedi—no matter the emotions that may arise.”  
  
Rosalie nodded dutifully. “I won’t, Master Yoda.”

* * *

For a long time she stared at the empty bunk opposite hers, hovering over a half-packed bag. As a Jedi, she didn’t have many belongings to begin with, so the travel bag that sat on her bed looked comically oversized with only her spare set of robes, a datapad, and some rations tucked into its main pocket. Ixchel’s bedclothes were tightly fitted around the corners, made perfectly, just like they were every morning. Every time the thought of the bruises on Ixchel’s face and the bleeding cut upon her brow nudged itself to the forefront of Rosalie’s mind, a sharp pang stung just beneath her solar plexus. Finally, she zipped the bag shut with force and reached under her pillow, feeling for one of the three wishing stones that resided there.  
  
She chose the one swirled with orange and white, the carvings along its edges signifying safety. It would be a lie if she said she really believed in the superstition of wishing stones anymore, but they held a resonance with her that she couldn’t ignore. She pulled the long corded rope that held the pendant over her head and tucked it beneath her inner tunic. Her breathing eased a bit, and she stooped low to the drawers inlaid beneath her bunk. When she pulled out the far right drawer entirely, she found her holorecorder taped to its back panel, right where she left it. Pieces of contraband littered her side of the room, but no one had ever found them—no one but Ixchel. She was more flagrant in handling them that day than any other, the fear coursing like heat through her skin canceling out her carefulness.  
  
Rosalie sat at her desk, resting her shaky knees. All of her muscles felt weak, doing so much as pressing the button to record seeming to take great effort. “Hey, Asra,” she said, her voice softening around his name. “I have to—” She bit down hard on her lower lip as she swallowed down whatever was choking her. “I may not be here when you get back—when you’re scheduled to get back. When is that, a week? I think so. I may not be back for quite a while, I don’t know. I don’t know.” She pressed a second set of half-moons into her palm, feeling the threat of tears again.  
  
Collecting herself was difficult, when she knew who she was talking to. The temptation to let herself cry was strong, the itch for the warmth of his arms around her even stronger. She didn’t have to hide anything when it was just them, and she never did. But she knew she had to be quick about this. “You said not to use this frequency unless it was an emergency, and…it isn’t one, not really. It isn’t _good_ , either, but I just don’t want you to come back to the Temple and—and not know.” Rosalie paused, and found herself smiling. “Also, I just needed to talk to you. Well, it’s more like talking at you, I suppose. Either way, it always helps.” She sobered, adjusting in her seat. “I’ll spare you the details now; Rein will tell you. There will be things she can’t explain, that only I can, but…”  
  
Heaviness befell her, narrow shoulders sagging. Rosalie looked into the holorecorder, picturing Asrai’ev Kalar’aa’s amber eyes in front of her. It was an ache inside of her that she had never been able to quell, the fact that the blood which colored her past was a secret to him still. He was one of the people she trusted most in the galaxy, with no reason to be reticent to tell him anything. But telling him about her family, why she hadn’t come into the Order until she was ten years old, about Enric Kelrian. It felt like inviting a storm to drown the flowers of a meadow. She wouldn’t have much of a choice once she returned from the inevitable—of which only she was certain. She refused to let the word _if_ into her head. “I’ll tell you everything when I’m back. I don’t know when that’ll be, but I’ll be back.” Rosalie sighed deeply, her fingers curling unto themselves as she pictured the silken black of Asrai’ev’s hair between them. “I needed to tell you that I love you. It sounds so final, but…truthfully, I don’t know how long it’s going to be before I can tell you that again. I love you.”  
  
She could only pray that, of all the words of hers radiation damage could obscure through the tightly knit web this message had to travel through, those would not be them.  
  
“ _Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum._ ”


	4. four.

Verena had recognized that face, too. She had only heard his voice while Rosalie watched the holomessage, and the reverberations of his thick, unfamiliar accent through the tinny filter of the datapad’s speakers failed to register and match to her memories. Since she had watched the footage herself, though, she hadn’t been able to cool the flush of her skin, nor the phantom pain that ached where her skin and bone ended and her cybernetic arm began.  
  
“Verena, it’s going to be fine.” Kaidin Vih’Torr’s soothing voice broke through the thick fog occupying the space between Verena’s brain and skull. He added, with mild uncertainty made difficult to hide by his innate authenticity, “We have a plan.”  
  
“ _A plan_ isn’t gonna make me feel any better,” Verena snapped, whipping her head around to face him. After a moment, seeing the surprise pass over Kaidin’s face, she closed her eyes and sighed. “Sorry.”  
  
“No, it’s fine,” Kaidin said, shaking his head. His eyes drifted down the length of the Temple hangar, landing on the figures of Rosalie Seeker and Rein Li Vale standing by their transport. Kaidin was the only volunteer the Council had cleared to go with them, to his chagrin and to theirs; Verena Solaris, Tylan Hart, and Anyarah Sesslyn were all Padawans yet. “I’m wound up, too.”  
  
Verena folded her arms tightly against her ribs as she followed Kaidin’s gaze. Even from there, she could tell Rosalie’s eyes were red. “I just wish I could go with her.”  
  
“I know,” Kaidin said. “But she’s probably glad you won’t be.”  
  
Verena scratched at the base of her ponytail, the tight band constricting her thick light brown hair strangely uncomfortable. “Yeah. Not like I’d make a difference if shit went wrong, anyway.” Verena had always thought herself strong, capable of taking care of herself, but that night made her doubt her own self-assurance for a long time. It had shocked her, how easily Enric Kelrian knocked her off her feet, how effortlessly his hold on the Force had disarmed her own. The strength that resided in him was immense, and she would have had no better chance of defeating him if the shadows in that Galactic City alleyway had yielded to spotlights.  
  
Verena was at a loss for what Rosalie could possibly have planned. _If_ , she thought bleakly, _she's got anything at all._  
  
A tug in the Force drew both Verena’s and Kaidin’s forms upright, and they walked in tandem toward Rosalie and Rein. Verena reached up and hugged her arms around Rosalie’s neck.  
  
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Rosalie said, the laugh in her voice a withering, dying sound. Manufactured levity. She let her arms tighten around her friend’s shoulders, silent for a long moment. “Ixchel and I both.”  
  
Verena pulled away, chewing the inside of her bottom lip. The unspoken knowledge between them heated their senses to an uncomfortable temperature, radiating from them like light. Until Enric had targeted Verena, Rein was the only one who knew what that name meant. As Verena lay in her bed in the Halls of Healing, a med-droid testing the sensation in her new metallic fingertips, Rosalie could only choke out the basics of what she hoped that, by some miracle, she would never have to lay bare again, guilt burning her throat as though she’d swallowed poison.  
  
Kaidin shifted in his stance, and when Rosalie met his eyes, his unknowing cut her. They smiled at each other weakly.  
  
“You ready?” Kaidin asked, one hand rested idly on the hilt of his lightsaber.  
  
Rosalie nodded, but her knees felt like they would buckle at the barest application of pressure. For a moment, she felt like her boots were cemented to the floor. “Hey,” she said, drawing Verena’s attention again. “Tell Tylan and Anyarah—” She faltered, and had to take a moment to catch her breath. Rosalie made herself smile again, only making it halfway, and rested a hand on Verena’s shoulder. “I said goodbye to them already, but…tell them _I love you_ for me, okay?”  
  
It was a rare enough thing, hearing a Jedi say so openly, without lowering their voice to a surreptitious whisper, the word _love_. In any context other than receiving a lecture to keep the word out of their mouth, and the idea out of their head, love was a forbidden concept. An uncontrollable feeling Jedi were taught to abandon from before they knew what it truly was. Love was a terrible bias, one the Jedi Order couldn’t afford to cloud the minds of those in battle, those forced with decisions made only more challenging by the factor of attachment. Heartbreak wasn’t something younglings were taught how to deal with without asking about it, and even then the lesson was more so a stern scolding on how they should never have let their guard down to it at all.  
  
But that hadn’t stopped all huddled in the current conversation from letting attachment, in one taboo form or another, “cloud” them, and they had no company save the maintenance droids buzzing about the hangar.  
  
Verena let a feeble laugh escape her, shaking her head slightly. “Don’t talk like you’re never coming back.”  
  
Rosalie squeezed Verena’s shoulder hard, leveling her gaze with hers. It always put Verena in awe, how much power Rosalie could put behind those eyes, how much power lay there anyway.  
  
“I may not,” Rosalie said, her voice quivering just at the end, the hard veneer she tried to lacquer over her words in turn fracturing under the weight of the words themselves. She looked in turn at Rein and Kaidin, who both widened their eyes at her. “We all have to be prepared for that.” She looked back at Rein, lingering on her. “We have to be.”  
  
“Why?” Verena asked, taking Rosalie’s hand off her shoulder and clutching it in her own. “I thought you said you had a plan.”  
  
“We do—” Kaidin started, his tone inferring contradiction to Rosalie’s revelation.  
  
“ _I_ do,” Rosalie said. “I told you, this is my responsibility. It’s my problem to fix, and there’s only one way I can do that.”  
  
“By going with him,” Verena said in disbelief. She let go of Rosalie’s hand. “You’re _actually_ going with him.”  
  
“Rosalie,” Rein said, stepping closer. “I know that seems like the only option—”  
  
“It is,” Rosalie said, turning her body to better face Rein. “You don’t know him, Rein; this isn’t something _standard mission protocol_ can be applied to. I need you to trust me when I say there is _no_ other option.”  
  
Silence hung heavy. Kaidin lay a gentle hand on Rosalie’s upper arm, and she looked up at him.  
  
“But won’t we be giving him exactly what he wants?” he asked. “Isn’t that the opposite of what we should be doing?”  
  
“There is no we,” Rosalie said, softly, shaking her head. “There’s me and him. What he wants is the only option _because_ it’s what he wants.” Rosalie solidified her stance, straightening her back. She felt out of place, putting command into her voice with her master standing right beside her. But in this situation, she was the ultimate authority—no matter how much she wished to strip herself of the right to say as much. She had to try to make them see that, or else everything would go wrong. “You’ll get Ixchel and bring her back here, and I’ll go with him. It has to happen that way. I’ll try to get back as soon as I can.”  
  
Rein chuffed, baffled. “Rosalie, I spoke on behalf of you under the impression you would be returning _with_ us, not doing exactly what the Council spoke against.”  
  
Rosalie looked at her ruefully, sighing gently. “Rein, you don’t understand. I _want_ you to understand—I want _all of you_ to understand—but you can’t. Even if I tried to help you do it, you couldn’t. Ever. All you can do is trust that I know what I’m doing.”  
  
Rein averted her eyes to the floor, turmoil swirling within her. She tried to harden herself against the imposing reality—one she was too stubborn to admit she couldn’t change—but every time she imagined letting Rosalie give herself away to this man, this _Dark Jedi_ that had hurt her so profoundly, she reeled. She trusted that Rosalie unquestionably knew Enric Kelrian better than she ever could or wanted to, and that she knew best how to handle him, but everything inside her fought against admittance to those knowledges. How was she supposed to accept that?  
  
“You can’t tell me you may not come back and expect me to understand,” Rein said, lowering her voice. The others around them fell away. “I trust you, Rosalie. Truly, I do. I know that this is what you know to be the path you must take. And I understand that this is…painful for you. More painful than I can imagine. Perhaps that’s just it, no?”  
  
Rosalie stopped Rein before she could continue, knowing just what she’d say. She took one of Rein’s hands and clasped it between her own. “My pain isn’t clouding my judgment, Rein,” she said, holding Rein’s hand close to her body. “If anything, it’s making it clearer. Arguing about this won’t change anything. This _has_ to be the way.”  
  
Rein held on tight, holding Rosalie’s eyes. The others’ senses came back into perception, but the cinch around her heart nary ceased. She felt like she shouldn’t let go, like she should hold Rosalie’s hand up the boarding ramp and into the cockpit like a child—like if she did let go, it would be for the last time.

* * *

Kit-Cha Station loomed before them, a hulking, intricately twisted mass of metal and glass suspended in space. The Zaladra System was nondescript and desolate, no habitable worlds save for a small aquatic moon, claimed by no one. Rein had just set her comlink down, almost physically tired from assuring Ardeth Brolen that they were there, and they were going to get his Padawan back safe and sound, when a scratchy voice came through the transport’s comm speakers.  
  
“Ship ID?” it asked, sounding vaguely inhuman and ambiguously female. An oddly informal prompt for ID, and coming an agonizingly long time after Rein had put in a request for docking permission. For a station so remote, there appeared to be a great number of ships on the waiting list to dock there.  
  
“Right away,” Rein said, tapping a touch screen on the console.  
  
After another lengthy wait, they were granted docking bay twelve. Rosalie hardly notice the passage of time, though—her mind was already inside Kit-Cha.  
  
“Which bay did he say, again?” Rein asked.  
  
“Seven,” Rosalie said, adjusting anxiously in her seat as Rein guided the ship into the structure.  
  
The ship’s landing gear _thunked_ against the floor, the repulsorlifts hissing as they helped it land softly, and Rein powered down the engines. She and Kaidin both were breathing more heavily, their bodily flesh as well as their reach in the Force weighed down by an invisible weight. Choking darkness enveloped every inch around them, like thick smoke from a fire. The muscles in Kaidin’s legs felt weakened, and the base of his neck throbbed with the Force’s warning.  
  
He started to say something, but it trailed off in a sigh. All three of them stood together by the boarding ramp, Rosalie’s thumb rested on its release, and it took them all a moment of collection before they unanimously decided that it was time to proceed.  
  
Rosalie and Rein at the head, and Kaidin just behind them, they made the long, _long_ walk out of their docking bay and down the hall. As the numbers above the bay doors grew smaller, the darkness deepened. Despite the other beings milling about the brightly lit industrial corridor, the trio only felt each other, and him. Their focus was manipulated and shaped by his unseen hands to see only what he wanted them to. Rosalie no longer felt her legs moving, only knew that she was moving forward, watching the numbers.  
  
_7._  
  
They stopped before the door, and Kaidin gripped Rosalie’s forearm in a supportive gesture. The hold was tighter than he meant, though, the tranquility he tried hard to instill within himself struggling to stabilize.  
  
Rosalie breathed out, and stepped away from both of them. The buttons on the control panel beside the door glowed a faint yellow-green. She half-expected them to slide open on their own, but found reason in how Enric would want _her_ to be the one to open them. A spiteful pang in her stomach made her wince as she pressed down hard on the door’s release. Pistons shifted, and the doors slid open with a swift _whoosh_. The warmth of Rein and Kaidin behind Rosalie was like a security net, there in case she fell back at the sight of the black star skiff before them. But she didn’t; she walked into the bay, more shadowed than the general space outside but still well-lit. She was deftly aware of the reassuring weight of her lightsaber against her hip.  
  
The doors shut behind them, sealing them in. The small _click_ of a locking mechanism slipping into place rang out with an echo. With the clamor shut out, the bay was deathly quiet.  
  
Rein swallowed hard. “You’re sure about this.” It was a question, though the tightness of her voice canceled out the slight lift that suggested inquisition.  
  
“We can’t go back now,” Rosalie said, just above a whisper. Her heart pounded fiercely against the inner wall of her chest. If she could have, she wouldn’t have hesitated to turn around and run.  
  
The star skiff’s boarding ramp hissed as it dropped open, slow and dramatic. Rosalie’s hands curled into fists at her sides, and unfurled again. The light from inside the ship spilled out across a portion of the bay, cut down the middle by a shadow.  
  
Enric Kelrian emerged from the light alone, stopping at the head of the ramp to look across the way. He smiled at the sight of three figures, and walked down the ramp with near-silent steps. He wore all-black robes, similar to a Jedi’s but more simply designed, long sleeves tucked into half-gloves. A hooded black cloak flowed behind him, the hood down and gathered at the back of his neck. His red hair was marginally longer than she remembered it, in need of a trim. As his boots touched the docking bay’s floor, Rosalie felt a shock go up her ankles and through her shins, and the overwhelming urge to _run_ nearly knocked her over.  
  
Enric spread his hands, still smiling like a friend, and stopped just short of five feet from her. “I see you _did_ end up bringing company,” he said, his voice clear and uncorrupted by radiation damage. Clear, and loud, and right there in front of her. No different than it had been on another space station, impossibly long ago yet impossibly recent. “A smaller party than I expected.”  
  
Rosalie found her voice. “Where is she?”  
  
She wanted to back away, put as much space between herself and Enric as possible, but she had to hold her ground. The way he looked at her, inspected her, leered at every inch of her, was akin to a thousand insects crawling under her skin.  
  
Enric chuckled, a deep, throaty sound, and clasped his hands behind his back. He never canted his eyes to look at either Rein or Kaidin, but kept them locked on Rosalie the entire time. They didn’t always stay on her eyes—glancing down the length of her hair, flickering across her chest to watch her breathing, blinking at her tense hands—but when they were there, she felt cold down to her bones.  
  
“Of course,” he said, smile softening. “The reason we’re all here.”  
  
A tether in the Force pulled taut between Enric and someone inside the ship. A sense Rosalie only came to be aware of then, at the same time Enric’s dominance over her senses waned enough that she could feel Ixchel. She sucked in a breath, the aura of Ixchel’s life swelling hope in her chest.  
  
Enric looked back at her, smirking now, smirking again like he did in the holomessage, like he always did when it was she he had his claws in. Finally, he exchanged glances with Rein and Kaidin, who stood at stark attention on either side of and just behind Rosalie, their hands on their sabers. “Oh,” Enric said, pretending to just then notice the latter fact, “you two don’t need to worry about a thing. Rosalie and I are old friends.” He made sure to meet Rein’s eyes, though he suspected she wouldn’t know as much. “The training she needs is not with the Jedi. Not any longer.”  
  
Rein unconsciously tightened her hand around the alloy hilt it held, and she knit her brow. “Excuse me?”  
  
“The Jedi Order’s interpretation of her prophecy was so easily accepted by all of you because it suited your ideals,” Enric said, ears perking up as two pairs of footsteps came down the ramp behind him. His words stirred in the group what would have been bemusement in a lighter setting. “You’ve done a wonderful job getting her to where she is—trust that I mean that. And a wonderful job at perpetuating a lie. It’s time she learned what it really means—what she’s really here for.”  
  
“You’re insane,” came a harsh whisper from Kaidin’s lips.  
  
Rosalie turned her head toward him. “Don’t,” she whispered.  
  
“Why?” Enric asked. “I never like the quiet ones. Besides, if either of you tries anything, I’ll kill all three of you.”  
  
He moved aside a step to reveal Ixchel, leaning on the arm of a short-statured man with long dark hair and a solemn face. Rosalie could feel his Force-sensitivity, as well as the darkness in him. Ixchel looked worse than she had on the holo, a fresh bruise discoloring her jaw and a limp in her right leg.  
  
“Ros…” she said, relief dragging her tired voice out to a whisper.  
  
Rosalie vaulted forward. She threw her arms around Ixchel’s neck and the man who aided her stepped back. Ixchel’s grip was strong despite her condition, practically bruising Rosalie’s shoulder blades with her knuckles. Rosalie buried her face in her black hair, tangled and dirty. Rosalie opened her eyes, still holding Ixchel close, and realized she had stepped beyond the boundary and Enric was deathly close to her now. She curled around Ixchel like a shield, meeting Enric’s eyes, those ice-blue tones disgustingly pleased.  
  
“You know I don’t lie to you,” Enric told her, speaking low, just to her, not for show.  
  
Rosalie tore her eyes away from him and pressed a kiss into the crown of Ixchel’s head. Quickly, she placed her in Kaidin’s arms for safekeeping, only seeing as they separated that Ixchel was crying. Rosalie’s right hand lingered on Ixchel’s shoulder as the latter gripped onto Kaidin’s robes. Ixchel looked at her sadly. Knowingly.  
  
Rosalie’s heart dropped at the realization. Half of the deal had been made. Now it was time for her to provide what she had promised.  
  
She reached an arm up around Kaidin and hugged him tight, wrapping her other arm around Ixchel, as well. She made sure to memorize how his chestnut hair felt against her skin.  
  
“You’re gonna be okay,” he said, his lips brushing against her ear. “We’ll get you out of this, I promise.”  
  
Rosalie pulled back, nodding. To keep back tears, she bit down on the inside of her cheek until the taste of blood washed over her palate, and kept on biting. She turned to face Rein, and hugged her firmly. Her cheek against Rein’s braids, a tear slipped down her cheek and dampened the shoulder of Rein’s tabard. She would do anything but look at Enric Kelrian with tears in her eyes, so she clandestinely rubbed at her eyes with her glove.  
  
“I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” Rosalie told her, taking in the scent of her hair. The feeling of her robes. The sound of her breath. “Tell Asra, okay? Tell him I know what I’m doing. Don’t let him try anything. You know he’ll want to try something.”  
  
They pulled slightly back from each other, still together, but distant enough to be face-to-face. Rein nodded, stroking the side of Rosalie’s face with a slow fondness. “I will.”  
  
At last, they pulled away. They suspended a silent thought between them, each holding it close and tending it like a fledgling campfire: _I’ll see you soon._  
  
Rosalie turned to him. It was like leaving a heated cabin for a blizzard of sleet, ice piercing her skin, slithering between her teeth and underneath her tongue, sweeping through her hair. Enric extended his hand, turned upward, awaiting hers. His eyebrows rose expectantly, and the dip her stomach took nearly made her lurch. She took a few steps forward and forced the stone-stiff muscles of her right arm to lift up. Swallowing back her repulsion, she rested her hand upon his, feeling the cool fabric of the heel of his glove against her bare fingertips. She looked at him straight-on, and realized for the first time how close they were in height. He couldn’t have been more than two inches taller than her.  
  
Enric coiled his fingers over Rosalie’s hand, locking her in place, even that tiny movement a possessive action. His face had been neutrally appeased until then, but the corners of his mouth bent into that smirk once again at Rosalie’s touch. Her muscles tightened with the urge to flee, but he felt her inclination and clamped down around her hand harder.  
  
Briefly, he addressed Rein again. Every word he spoke poured from his mouth with a sickly sweetness. “She’ll be in good hands, Rein. Don’t trouble yourself. After all, this was her choice.”  
  
Enric moved Rosalie’s hand to his right, and swept his left arm across her shoulders to pull her against his side. Their closeness took the air from her lungs. He smelled of citrus and copper, and the tomuon wool he wore was kitten-soft. The brunet man, still silent, who bore a palpable attachment to Enric himself, followed close behind them.  
  
The hand that led her forcefully up the boarding ramp may as well have been the blood-slicked palm that had once held her against Enric’s chest; the interior of the star skiff could have been her parents’ room, where she had been taken as audience for their deaths, and for one dizzying second, as she approached it, she wouldn’t have known the difference if she were asked. Rosalie let out a soft mewl as her feet faltered, tripping as she resisted and Enric continued to pull her along. Panic froze her muscles in place as Enric released her hand and grabbed her throat. The rush of blood in her head dulled out the sound of the boarding ramp closing.  
  
_What have I done?_  
  
In her ear, he whispered harshly, “You’re not theirs anymore, and they’re not yours. I want you to remember that.”


	5. five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kinda skips around a bit. The scenes with Rosalie take place directly after the last chapter, and the scenes at the Jedi Temple take place a couple of days afterward.

“I know, Master Kenobi.”  
  
Rein’s voice was a hollow version of itself, husky and dry. She sat with her legs crossing each other upon a squat cushioned seat in a shaded room, high up in one of the Jedi Temple’s towering spires. Shafts of golden daylight filtered in through slat-like windows, spilling across her lap and through Obi-Wan Kenobi’s auburn hair. He sat across from her, dolefully searching her face as she slowly emerged from her long silence. He had waited to ask for a private audience with her until now, knowing she would need the extra time.  
  
“I failed her,” Rein said, sluggishly shaking her head. “I let her go. I never should have let go of her.” She absentmindedly curled her hand into a loose fist, imagining Rosalie’s hand there.  
  
Obi-Wan sighed deeply, though quietly, blue eyes watching Rein’s hand. “You cannot let yourself take the burden of this alone,” he said. “Rosalie isn’t gone. We will find her, and all will be set right.”  
  
“She’s my _Padawan_ ,” Rein retorted, casting her wet eyes in Obi-Wan’s direction. “I’m supposed to protect her. I’m supposed to keep her _safe_. I promised I would always keep her safe. And I let this happen.” Her voice failed toward the end, trailing off in a whisper. “I could have _done_ something. I failed her—I did.”  
  
“Rein.” Obi-Wan reached out to clasp his hand over hers. The display of physical affection caught them both off-guard, the moment of silence that followed extending longer than a conversational pause. As they both acclimatized to the touch, Obi-Wan’s grasp grew more assured, more comforting. “You must not blame yourself. You _musn’t_. If you do, it will only make it harder to move forward. Move forward and think of a plan. Rosalie needs you now more than ever. You know that.”  
  
Rein’s fingers tightened minutely around his hand. She nodded. “I do.”  
  
“If you truly do believe that you failed her, make it right.”  
  
Rein could still remember what Obi-Wan looked like, so it was easy to imagine his countenance in place of the innumerable signatures—living and inanimate—she could register. It was easy to envision his pleading expression, softly enforcing. In the Force, his sentiment was clear enough on its own. Clear and unmistakable, a breath of fresh, reinvigorating air. Rein nodded again.  
  
“I will.”

Later, she stood upon one of the Temple mezzanines, leaning over the railing and focusing on not one thing in particular. Mulling over Obi-Wan’s words, she felt the tug that threatened to pull her heart straight through her chest grew harder, more insistent. The longer she stood still, the less she could ignore the sensation. She felt completely buoyant, like the air she stood in was a saltwater ocean, keeping her afloat at its surface. Bitterly, she laughed at her intermittent urges to look to her side where Rosalie often stood, and ask her how to proceed. Of course, Rosalie had told her to do nothing, to keep still and say put, wait for her to save herself.  
  
But the very idea of simply leaving her alone, letting the wolves circle her and waiting for her to find her own way out of their jaws’ path, made Rein sick. It went against every inch of her, and she refused. She and Obi-Wan would form a search party, and the former would meditate as broadly and as intensely as she could to locate her surrogate sister’s presence. A blockade in the Force was set against such detection, and Rein had no need to guess by whom. But she knew if she tried hard enough, she could find Rosalie in there somewhere. She didn’t have any other choice.  
  
A familiar presence jarred her from her ruminations. Rein pulled away from the railing, looking in the direction of the Temple hangars. Her breath was shallow, nervous, as she practically jogged through halls and corridors, feeling her way along walls for psychometric familiarity as she went. In the quiet ride up the turbolift that would open up to the hangar that presence was burning in, Rein felt her heart race. Compelling it to slow was useless as her feet pounded the pristine floor. _He must know that something is wrong; he can’t find out from the Council._  
  
Down a lowered boarding ramp Asrai’ev Kalar’aa’s boots sounded, heavy _clanks_ upon the metal. Stray infant strands of black hair stuck with sweat to his hairline, and a maroon stain of poorly cleaned blood discolored the skin to the left of his nose. They were products of his assignment, but the heaviness with which his chest rose and fell, the frayed emotion visible in flashes behind the storm-center calmness of his aura, their cause was an unspoken knowledge between them both as they approached each other.  
  
It struck Rein after a moment, with surprising strength, that he already knew.  
  
Momentarily at a loss, Rein shook her head. “I thought your assignment wasn’t due to finish until the end of the week.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, especially to him: if anyone was capable of proving wrong Council’s standard time assessments for missions, it was Asrai’ev.  
  
He was quiet for a moment, gathering a breath and exhaling it. In the face of Rein’s familiarity, he softened enough to remove the edge from his voice, which he intended to save for others, later on. “What happened?”

* * *

Enric turned his head toward his apprentice. “Ready the ship for take-off.” Adjusting his hold on Rosalie, he bitterly added, “Before they try anything.”  
  
The Force was bloated with gloat and pride. The materials of Rosalie’s robes tugged taut against her skin as Enric led her up the squat staircase that led to the audience chamber. She looked over her shoulder in time to see the younger man disappear into a turbolift. She knew the ship’s layout well, the memories of the schematics of a J-type star skiff like a sticky residue in her head, leftover from childhood. Her father had flown almost exclusively in one, adopting the Naboo tradition of having it chromium-plated. Countless times, Marich Seeker’s gentle hand had led Rosalie up a set of stairs just like the one she walked up then, her toes lightly kicking the backs of the steps, still a little clumsy. When the doors would open, it would smell of ladalums and vanilla, sometimes cinnabar or mint—the smells of home. But now, only the smell of coolant and cold metal greeted her, the lights surprising her with their dimness.  
  
She knew there was an entrance to a private room just beside the makeshift throne, inlaid clandestinely in the bulkhead, typically reserved for whatever figure of nobility owned the ship. She could remember sneaking out of a bunkroom similar to the one Enric led her into, in the wake of a nightmare and looking for the warmth of her father’s arms to assure her it wasn’t real. Sometimes, he would still be awake, his scruffy face lit up in the light of a datapad, either a work of fiction or a briefing of the impending senatorial conference keeping him up late. Sometimes, her mother would be there, too, her long hair in deep brown curls clustered around her face when they weren’t contained in tight braids. Rosalie would climb in and snuggle between both of them, all of her fear melting away. She stole a look over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the small control panel beside the door.  
  
The bunkroom lights were jarringly bright in comparison to those in the audience chamber. There was a bed on either side, both sets of light gray sheets tightly pressed and identical. Wordlessly, Enric sat Rosalie down on the mattress to their right, stiff and unmoving beneath her weight. The skiff’s engines came to life, a faint rumbling in the deck smoothing out into a hum as they warmed up. Enric’s hand came down hard around Rosalie’s forearm, and her head jerked up to look at him in surprise.  
  
He held her eyes as he pawed her waist, his fingers finding the hilt of her lightsaber and unclipping it from her belt. Rosalie felt scrambled, unable to form a coherent thought with him so close to her, with those eyes relentlessly burrowing into her own. He let her go and stood up; the pain he inflicted upon her arm lingered there, like residual heat from a burn.  
  
As Enric secured his grasp around the curved hilt of her lightsaber, she found herself digging her nails into the sheets, clutching the arm he had touched close to her abdomen. She felt a heat rising inside her, feeling bare without her weapon at her side. She could pull it from him if she wanted to, reach out with the Force and take it back—  
  
but in the presence of him, she felt stuck in place, her connection to the Force fuzzy and opaque.  
  
“The journey will only last two standard days,” he told her, moving toward the door. He made no further comment, the tone of voice that formed the words making that time frame sound insignificant, as though it weren’t agonizing to think of.  
  
_Only_ , she thought.  
  
Her bitter thought seemed to catch him on his way out of the bunkroom. Enric turned around to face her again, and she resisted the urge to shrink back. He looked down at her lightsaber in his hand, turning it over to look at the delicate details engraved in the upper hilt—curlicues and swirls, tiny flowers and leaves on some of the wider curves, resembling vines. Rosalie had copied the markings from memory, hoping they would translate well from orowood to metal alloy. The Council would have made her make a new lightsaber entirely if they knew the sentiment behind them.  
  
Enric ran his fingertips thoughtfully over the reflective surface of the hand guard Rein had given her, and down over a looping vine. The half-smile he gave almost made Rosalie lift her upper lip in a snarl, her stomach sinking at him going where he was not invited.  
“It’s beautiful,” he told her. He looked at her again, caressing the patterns. “It’s remarkable, how well you remembered the carvings from memory.”  
  
Rosalie blinked at him. “What?”  
  
Enric’s smile expanded to bare teeth, accompanied by an accommodating chuckle. “These are the carvings from your chest, aren’t they?”  
  
He let his words fall onto Rosalie’s lap like lead, drawing down her jaw. Enric gave her a graceful nod as he exited through the door, toggling it shut.  
  
Immediately, Rosalie stood up. She felt beneath her feet the shift of the repulsorlifts raising the star skiff off the ground. She could tell that they were still out there, standing in the docking bay, watching her go. Her hand found her stomach as she felt for them, tried to fight through the clouds of thick, oily fog that choked her thoughts. But no matter how hard she threw out lines in the Force, nothing could get past the bulkhead in front of her. Without realizing it, Rosalie had walked over to the wall closest to them and flattened her hands upon its cool, white smoothness. The tense, panicked cluster of their senses wasn’t beyond her detection, but it was outside of her grasp entirely. She closed her eyes to focus, but in the blackness behind her eyelids she found only more crystalline clarity of the parasite in her head.  
  
_They can’t hear you_.  
  
Rosalie gasped, pulling away from the wall as though it had shocked her. It was clearer than day, so stark in her ear Rosalie had to look over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t whispered it there himself. On Coruscant, with Enric far away wherever he was, even the impressions of his voice he crafted in her dreams weren’t so real as that. Now, with him a mere level above her in the cockpit, holding in his hands an item that resonated more powerfully with her residual sense than perhaps any other, she could feel his hand creeping along her shoulder if she thought hard enough, feel the whisper of something soft, then sharp, along her neck, though there was nothing.  
  
She looked up toward the ceiling, bringing one hand back to the wall for stability. Her fingers curled into her palms as she shivered; there was an almost measurable change of temperature as the skiff emerged into space. A slow breath escaped Rosalie’s lips, the finality of the jolt the ship took as it entered hyperspace breaking fissures into her being. She was truly alone now.

* * *

Physically, Ixchel was healing wonderfully. She lay on her back upon a softly cushioned bed, against the far-back wall of one of the Hall of Healing’s many smaller, enclosed therapy rooms. It was dim, but not completely dark, and the temperature of the room was artificially raised to the standard Human body temperature encourage her comfort and relaxation. With the excellent work of the Order’s master healers, special stones and crystals used to amplify the effects of the Force, all of Ixchel’s bruises and lacerations had completely healed over, and that day was her final one in the therapy room.  
  
A soft knock came at the door, and Ixchel slowly turned her head to look at it. She had one hand rested on her abdomen and one knee bent up as she was staring at the ceiling. “Who’s there?” she asked.  
  
“It’s me, ‘Chel.”  
  
The healers had only been allowing her visitors for the past thirty hours, and most of the time it had been Ardeth who came to check on her. Ixchel was glad she heard a voice other than his this time.  
  
“’Course it is,” she said, shaking her head. For all of the Force’s amplification in the space around her, it took her long enough to recognize the presence. “Should have known. Come in, Tylan.”  
  
The door slid open, and Tylan Hart stepped through the threshold. It was dusk on Coruscant, so the broad windows that lined the Hall of Healing let in no sunlight to blind Ixchel’s unaccustomed eyes. Tylan sighed as he shut the door behind him, but it sounded more like a normal breath elongated from exhaustion. Ixchel sat up on the bed to get a better look at him. He looked disheveled, worse for wear than on a typical weeknight. Ixchel sniffed for smoke or alcohol, and detected a faint hint of the latter.  
  
“Hey,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her thighs. She tried for a smile. “It’s good to see you.”  
  
Tylan half-smiled, shrugging his heavy shoulders. “Probably good to see anybody but Brolen at this point.”  
  
Ixchel snorted. “Yeah. C’mere, sit down.”  
  
Tylan sat beside Ixchel’s feet on the bed, and she smelled the alcohol more heavily. She twisted her lips as she looked at him stare off into a corner of the room for a long moment, saying nothing. Perhaps thinking of something _to_ say. Finally, he scooted back far enough to lean his back against the wall behind him, and opened his mouth to say something. His lips fell closed most of the way after a second.  
  
“You been drinking?” Ixchel ventured.  
  
Tylan nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been drinking.”  
  
The longer Ixchel looked at him, the better she saw his dark circles, and the redness that tinted the whites of his eyes. “Thought your stash ran out a couple weeks ago. You managed to get alcohol with all this going on?”  
  
“I was out,” Tylan said, looking down at his fingers as he wrung them.  
  
“Wait, you went to a cantina?”  
  
“S’what I said; I was out. Nobody noticed.” Tylan’s voice was gaunt and sad, the words sinking in the air and piling on the floor like dust. “Everyone’s so worried.”  
  
Ixchel bit her lip, pulling her legs closer against her body. “Yeah. I guess that makes sense.” She laughed bitterly, resting her chin atop one knee. “I’ve been so out of the loop. I can’t even really tell how long it’s been.”  
  
“Two days,” Tylan said, barely waiting for Ixchel to finish. His eyes looked glossy as they focused hard on a loose thread off the cuff of his sleeve. “It’s been two days.”  
  
Ixchel lifted her head up, trying to mend her expression into one not of pity. In Tylan’s sense raged torment, and Ixchel adjusted uneasily. It was hard to forget how Tylan felt about Rosalie Seeker. He hid it well enough when she was around—he had gotten good at suppressing the blush that colored his cheeks when she sat next to him in the refectories, and had long since learned how to hide the fond shift in his aura when she greeted him good morning—but at that moment, alone with one of the few people who really knew, he had to tighten his jaw to fight against the moisture in the corners of his eyes.  
  
If Ixchel didn’t feel bad enough for him already—after Rosalie had confided in her about herself and General Kalar’aa, a fact of which Tylan was yet tragically unaware—she surely did now. She would have hugged him, if she didn’t feel the compulsion to stay balled up within herself.  
  
Ixchel was ready to give an encouraging statement of _she said she’ll get back_ or it’s _Rosalie; she’ll be okay_ , but Tylan cut her off before she started.  
  
“What did he do?” he asked, turning his head to face her.  
  
Ixchel blinked. “What?”  
  
She could hear the intoxication in his voice as it got louder. It hurt her ears, having heard nothing louder than a politely lowered voice in two days. Tylan seemed to notice, and collected his composure.  
  
“Enric. What did he do?”  
  
Ixchel furrowed her brow, her shoulders stiffening. “Why do you wanna know?” she asked.  
  
“They never put someone in a therapy room unless it’s serious,” Tylan said, shrugging as though it were obvious. “How bad was it?”  
  
Maybe it was a morbid curiosity brought on by inebriation, or just genuine concern unfortunately worded, but either way Ixchel felt the question invasive. She wrapped her arms around her shins, pulling them snugly against her chest. She shrugged. “I don’t know. What scale are we using? One-to-ten?”  
  
Tylan sighed, the back of his head thumping against the wall as he leaned back. He looked to be mulling something over, the process slowed by whatever Corellian whiskey or off-brand rum he had paid too much for.  
  
“He just—” Ixchel started, speaking further only because she was eager to get out an explanation quicker than Tylan could drag on the subject. _I know he really cares_ , she considered, _but right now all he wants is an idea of how to torture himself over what might be happening to Rosalie_. “It’s kind of foggy,” she lied. “A few bruises here and there—the healers said my jaw was fractured a little. My leg, too. Nothing bad. Well, my leg was more like broken, not fractured, but…” A beat passed in silence, and Ixchel folded her arms atop her knees. “Only reason I got hurt was because I took off my binders.”  
  
Tylan squinted at her.  
  
“He had me in binders,” Ixchel explained. “I decided to be a smart ass and take them off after he left the room. I didn’t think about what I’d do when he came _back_.”  
  
Ixchel had been in her _sleepclothes_ , no weapons she could unsheathe from the loose cotton of her waistband and be a hero for herself. In hindsight, she cursed herself for the impulse. In looking for a makeshift weapon, Ixchel had found naught but a blandly decorated ceramic vase tucked away in a deep alcove—some sentimental artifact from one world or another—her hands around its base as the doors to the audience chamber opened. In haste, Ixchel broke off a piece of its curved lip, its edge jagged and painful against her palm as she gripped it tightly.  
  
He hadn’t looked angry when he first saw her, but the pain that shot through her leg and sent her to the floor told her more than enough. Enric Kelrian had twisted the Force just beneath Ixchel’s knee, cracking the bone and splintering it. The pain of it blinded her, a scream morphed into a gasp by the firm hands taking her throat and pulling her up. He said nothing until she was on the floor again, his fists bursting blood vessels beneath her skin before his own strength knocked her from his hold. His forearm pressed down on her trachea so hard she feared it may snap in two, and his other hand balled up the fabric over her pelvis in a harsh twist.  
  
His soft yet guttural words were a warning that he would start again where he had stopped, if she didn’t stay where he put her.  
  
“Whatever,” she said, at length, her voice dry and crackly. Her very soul was torn to bleeding at the thought of those hands on her best friend; she didn’t want Tylan to bear that weight, too, alongside everything else. “It wasn’t that bad. Really.”  
  
Tylan could feel her mendacity, but didn’t persist. Instead, he pushed himself off the bed and stood with a tired slouch. Ixchel craned her neck to look up at him. “You think we’ll ever see her again?” Tylan asked, the query a husky whisper.  
  
Ixchel drew back. “Of course I do,” she said. “Tylan, don’t let yourself go down that road, okay? You can’t. She’s coming back; it’s Rosalie. You really think she would have done this if she didn’t have some idea of how she was gonna get out of it?”  
  
Tylan looked over his shoulder. “You really think she wouldn’t?”  
  
Ixchel’s gaze fell, doubtful, but she picked it back up in short order. “Even if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’ll figure it out. It’s Rosalie, Tylan. You can’t stand here and tell me you think she’s—…hopeless, or something.”  
  
“She’s not hopeless,” Tylan said. He could still hear Verena’s voice: _She said to tell you she loves you_. It had lit a spark in his chest that effervesced down to his fingertips. Before he could let his mind race forward in a sprint toward wild assumptions, the finality of it struck him like a stone. Rosalie loved everyone—one didn’t have to know her well in order to know even that. But she had never said those words to him before, not even in private, away from the ears of those dogmatic. Why _now_ , no matter how she’d meant it?  
“She’s helpless—and she knows it. Somehow, I think that’s worse.”

* * *

It hadn’t been three standard hours until Rosalie felt a presence behind the bunkroom door. It wasn’t Enric’s; it was the other one. She stood by the bed on the right-hand side, hands clasped just below her sternum, awaiting their lapse of hesitance to pass. She had tried to sit down and rest her legs a few times, but restlessness brought her up again every time she did.  
  
The doors opened, revealing a haggard young man leaning one hand on the frame. Rosalie furrowed her brow as they met eyes. He was shorter than she was, but not by much; deep circles underlined his gray-blue eyes, like puddles beneath an overcast sky. He blinked several times as he straightened his posture, and his sense in the Force grew tight with apprehension—and just a bit of curiosity.  
  
He was taking her in, she realized, turning to face him fully. She would have felt the weight of being unarmed more intensely, had the aura surrounding him not rang completely quiet of threat. The dark side was within him, but compared to Enric Kelrian, this one was a puppy. Rosalie didn’t have to dig any deeper than the surface to feel his deep-seated conflict—a light trying to push through the darkness he struggled to put forward.  
  
“You’re his apprentice,” she said, half-unaware of the words herself. It was an odd, otherworldly feeling, seeing another being whose life Enric had touched so deeply.  
  
“I am,” he said, revealing an even Coruscanti accent, no sharp edges in his intonation. He stepped into the room, inwardly cautious. “My name is Mykal Zeras.”  
  
Rosalie nodded once, the way he had looked at her when he first laid eyes on her sticking to the side of her conscious thought like glue. She wasn’t unaccustomed to looks like that, but from him, it felt strange. Her lips parted, but he spoke again.  
  
“You’re Rosalie,” Mykal said, bringing his hands up and absently playing with his fingers. “I know. I came to check on you. See how you’re doing.”  
  
Rosalie chuffed, folding her arms. “That’s nice of you,” she said dryly. She flicked her eyes upward. “Did he want you to make sure I wasn’t getting a head start on plotting my escape?”  
  
Mykal tried for a chuckle, the sound coming out halfhearted. He shook his head. “No, no, Enric didn’t send me.” He paused to look at her eyes. Not _into_ them, but _at_ them. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Can I get you anything?”  
  
“No,” Rosalie said, resisting the urge to laugh. It was almost funny in its absurdity. Through all of Enric’s infiltrations, in how connected their minds had become over the previous eight years, Rosalie had never known he’d taken on an apprentice. She had never given the possibility any consideration, but faced with its reality, it seemed obvious: another life he could have complete, nonnegotiable control over. “How long have you been in his service?”  
  
It was a specific set of words, and the way Mykal’s eyes flickered to the deck and back up was a signal that he caught on. An apprenticeship with Enric could have only been such in name. “Eleven years,” Mykal said, dropping his hands to his pockets. “Almost twelve, I think.”  
  
Rosalie nodded, trying to gauge his age. _Eleven years_. Mykal had been under Enric’s thumb since before she had lost her family to him. In the silence that stretched forward, Rosalie felt empathy swell in her chest. He was still Enric’s apprentice, she had to remember, undoubtedly his closest friend and companion, at his side and ear almost always. Despite the seed of doubt that had been planted in her mind as to his willingness to that position, she couldn’t let her guard down. Mykal Zeras was a darksider yet.  
  
“This bed here is typically mine,” Mykal said, his voice raising an octave with the stark change of subject. He gestured lamely to the bed on the other side of the room from Rosalie. “Of course, I’m fine sleeping elsewhere.”  
  
Rosalie found herself smiling a polite, closed-lipped smile. “Where else would you sleep?” Before he could answer, she shook her head. The longer she looked at him—the fluffy dark hair that framed his clean-shaven face and reached down to brush the base of his neck, the gentle sag of his shoulders, how very, _very_ tired he was—the more of her wariness of him sloughed away. Comfort wasn’t what replaced it, nor trust, but more so assuredness. “It’s fine. Keep your bed.” Not that Rosalie could fall asleep if she wanted to.  
  
Mykal allowed a smile. It was a wilting thing, and quick to falter, but it was real. He ran his fingers through his hair as they both inhabited the stone-still quiet around them. Rosalie watched his back as he walked an aimless few steps out of the conversational bounds. A deep uneasiness settled in her stomach, a vague nausea working its way up her esophagus. She could feel Enric’s presence still up there, in the cockpit. She stifled a shiver at the vague threat of him descending the turbolift and coming down there himself.  
  
As she thought that, and her tiredness grew harder to ignore, she gathered a breath and asked, “Does he ever sleep?”  
  
It was a worthy question. When Rosalie was asleep, Enric was there; when Rosalie was waking, Enric was there. Never, it seemed, did he ever spare a time of day for rest himself. Always on her heels, no matter when.  
  
Mykal turned and looked at her, brows perked. After a moment of consideration, he bobbed his head to one side. “You would be surprised at just how little of that he does.”  
  
“So what does he do?” Rosalie regretted asking the question only after it left her mouth, for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint.  
  
But Mykal wasn’t perturbed. He seemed, if anything, glad for someone to talk to. He knelt before the bulkhead at the head of his cot, busying himself with organizing books that needed no organizing. “Enric’s had this ship for a long time—since before I met him. And I’ve never once known him to sleep in it. He’s used it for his purposes since long before he had a palace with convenient dungeons and passageways to make things easier.”  
  
He’d said it with a dismissive wave of his hand, but Rosalie had to hold back a scoff. “A palace?” she asked.  
  
Mykal nodded. “A few years ago, a while after Alderaan, we couldn’t stay on Coruscant anymore. Too visible, even in the lower levels, with how hard they were searching—”  
  
Rosalie felt her chest contract, a hard, waxy ball settling in the base of her throat. Mykal’s sense stiffened a moment later, their respective pauses like sequential heart beats. Mykal pivoted to face her. He sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a sincerity that nearly struck Rosalie dumb.  
  
She rested her knuckles against her lips. “Go on.”  
  
Mykal turned back to the books, his voice more tentative. “We found a planet in the Expansion Region. Completely backwater. So much so that the sight of a starship was this… _once-in-a-lifetime_ occurrence there. It was perfect for him: so little traffic that nobody knew what a bloody starship looked like. I'll spare you the details of its government, but he stole the seat of a lord on the western continent. Everybody was so scared, so _petrified_ by this off-worlder, by what he did to that lord and his family, that they practically let him have it. Gave little protest, especially after he showed them the Force. It's been a safe place so far.”  
  
“They didn’t know what the Force was?” This wasn’t unheard of, especially in the times they were in, but more common was a misunderstanding of the Force, rather than an ignorance to its existence entirely.  
  
“Oh, no,” Mykal said. “No idea at all. It's this terrifying magic to them, more so than to any other being in the galaxy I've seen. Evil, almost. Well, not _almost_ to many.”  
  
Rosalie let the topic sit in the air between them. Surely, it should be no wonder, if the people of this world had never known the Force before Enric showed it to them: if all one sees of the Force is what he could do with it, _evil_ would be the best word to describe it. She considered sitting down, but felt compelled to remain upright. “You never told me what he does,” she said.  
  
At last, Mykal stood. It took him a moment to turn around, like he was preparing for something. Though when he finally did, it took him another couple of seconds to compose himself. It was like every time he looked directly at Rosalie, it threw him off-kilter. “Something tells me you already know the answer to that.”  
  
Rosalie swallowed. “Here?”  
  
Mykal gestured vaguely toward the audience chamber. “There’s a cabin just off the main room, there. That’s where spends most of his time.” He paused, then added, quietly, “I’m never sure if he’s alone in there.”  
  
Rosalie finally gave in to the urge to sit down. She let out a long breath, setting her hands upon the mattress, on either side of her hips. She stared down at the deck between her boots, able to feel only Enric’s nebulous presence as she tried to search the Force for some type of calm. Begrudgingly, Rosalie wished she knew how he did it—how he threw his signature in such a way that felt like he was everywhere and nowhere all at once. She felt something Mykal didn’t appear to: the slightest hint of morbid, thick satisfaction. It clung to her skin like a sheen of oil. She blinked hard and stood again.  
  
“There’s a refresher just there,” Mykal said, thick brows furrowed in something resembling worry, pointing to the far wall of the bunkroom.  
  
Rosalie looked at him for a moment, blank, but nodded a moment later. “Thank you.”  
  
Inside the small, cramped refresher, alone to an extent, Rosalie breathed out a long breath, emptying her lungs and refilling them several times. She stayed there for a long time, leaning over the slick counter top, acutely aware of the frantic pinpricks in the Force that were her friends. She could feel them reaching out, just enough that their attempts were ghostly impressions upon her consciousness. But she could do nothing to reach back.  
  
Staying holed up inside the refresher was tempting, but Rosalie decided to venture back out into the bunkroom after whispers of claustrophobia began to make themselves known. She found Mykal gone, the only remnants of him a small pile of belongings on his mattress: a datapad and several sheets of flimsiplast, along with some writing utensils. Sticking out from beneath the flimsiplast was a delicate chain of pale, milky metal, attached to a nondescript pendant only half-visible. She was curious, but she didn’t snoop, a greater sense of curiosity tugging at her. Before she put her hand on the control panel beside the door, she probed around the ship, finding both men’s senses in the cockpit, tense and argumentative. In the midst of a heated conversation, Enric was clearly visible in the Force, having dropped concentration from his everywhere-nowhere deception.  
Rosalie toggled the door open, and the dimly lit audience chamber greeted her, sepulchral. Carefully, as though she may step on a mine, Rosalie walked out, her eyes locked on the door that led to the primary hallway. At length, Rosalie turned her gaze to the private quarters. She faltered, her balance wavering. She knew, with harsh clarity, that he had done this on purpose. The low lights, close to darkness, like the ones she had walked through to find her father after her nightmares. The same room she approached then, only a different ship. A different monster than a bad dream haunted her back now.  
  
Or, very well, the exact same one.  
  
He seemed to materialize at her side out of nowhere. Rosalie jumped back, a small gasp escaping her. She braced herself on the wall to her left, afraid the muscles in her legs would soon give up on her.  
  
“Exploring?” he asked, his hands clasped, unseen, behind his back.  
  
It took a long time—too long—for Rosalie to find the ability to speak. When she did, her voice was brittle, like glass. “Should I have stayed in the bunkroom?”  
  
Her shakiness made Enric smile. He took Rosalie’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, relishing in the quake that went through her body at his lightest touch. “You can go wherever you like, Rosalie.”  
  
It made her sick, how he spoke her name as though he enjoyed the taste of it. He stroked her chin gently, his eyes dropping from her own to the skin of her cheek, like an animal sizing up a meal.  
  
Enric leaned into her, able to hold her in place with just two fingers as he kissed the apple of her cheek. It was lasting and warm, though it froze Rosalie down to her core. Her breath left her, her lungs filled instead with packed snow, stinging her every time she dared try to take a breath. Her palms ached with the urge to push him away, but she felt like if she moved an inch, she would incur the sharpness of his teeth, just behind the disarming softness of his lips.  
  
When Enric pulled away, he gave her chin one last soft swipe. Rosalie barely saw him leave her, the space before her a blurry fog. Only the faint sound of the hallway door closing broke through her cottony-thick haze and made her breathe again. Rosalie’s hand flew up to her cheek, the skin there burning hot. She dared not look in the direction of the hall; instead, she looked toward the room to her left.  
  
Rosalie moved her feet toward the door, every step an aching pain up through her legs. The hand that pressed down on the control panel didn’t feel like her own, but it was. Inside was pitch darkness, a wave of familiarity practically knocking her down. Her other hand still covered her cheek, the invisible brand Enric left on her burning like an iron.  
  
She didn’t want to think about it, but when she saw the vague outline of a bed in the room, slightly lighter against the black, she was a child again. Small and skinny and too tall for her age. Marich Seeker petting her haphazard braid, pulling her into his protection.  
  
But before she could step inside, the reason she came to that room flooded her senses. Bile rose in her throat at the rotted, dark residue of death and pain, so deep she could drown in it. Her stomach twisted and churned, and once again her balance nearly failed her. She had entertained the idea of stepping inside, but now she backed away from the twisted void before her. The weight of it nearly crushed her, the hot, rancid fever of residual death threatening to suffocate her. In an instant, she was in her parents’ bedroom—faced with the image of a bed bloodied, coated in gore, ugly shards of bone jutting out of where Rosalie would best like to lay her head, their sweet smiles gone.  
  
Rosalie didn’t realize she had collapsed to her knees, and was only vaguely aware that she had to push herself up to get back to the bunkroom. She had to paw for the control panel to shut the door. When she finally did, the cold sweat which clung her robes to her skin made her feel frozen, the heat that seemed to radiate off of that room leaving her all at once. A hard sob wracked her shoulders and she sunk to her knees again.


	6. six.

The chill of space always found its way under Mykal’s skin, creeping just below his dermis and raising bumps along the surface. He leaned back languidly in the copilot’s chair, arms tight against his torso, knuckles pressed against his mouth to keep his teeth from chattering. He tried to retain as much warmth as possible, but it was a fruitless effort. He couldn’t decide if he was thankful for or resentful toward his master’s question, a half-unwelcome distraction from the chill.  
  
“Why aren’t you asleep?” Enric asked him, eyes scanning a datapad. It would seem, to an outsider, like a genuine concern, but Mykal was preparing himself already for the malicious bite. “You should rest, you know. You don’t do well when you don’t.”  
  
It wasn’t untrue. Mykal felt the ache of exhaustion settle behind his eyes, slugging his muscles. “I’m fine,” he said, though he blinked heavily at the same time.  
  
Enric looked over at him from the pilot’s chair, halfway amused. “You’re not. What’s the matter?” he asked, knowingly.  
  
Mykal sighed through his nose, adjusting uncomfortably. He typically spent most of his time on a journey in the bunkroom, reading or practicing or otherwise. It was some of the only time he could have to truly just himself, and the fact that he was spending that time in the cockpit, cheating himself out of rest, was suspect. Enric was an observant man; Mykal was fool to think he wouldn’t comment on his acolyte’s change of routine.  
  
“Nothing’s the matter,” he said, affecting a casual tone. “Just can’t sleep.”  
  
“Why,” Enric said, a chuckle behind his voice, “afraid of a little girl?”  
  
Mykal cast him a glare. “I’m not afraid of her,” he said, staring back out into the swirling blue of hyperspace. “I just don’t want to bother her.”  
  
Enric snorted, looking back to the datapad on his lap. “You’re too careful,” he said, serious again. “Let me worry about Rosalie Seeker’s comfort.”  
  
It wasn’t Rosalie’s comfort Mykal was concerned with, at least not to the degree presumed—it was his own. Every time he saw her, it was like laying his eyes upon something that shouldn’t be real. Like a figure from a dream had taken solid form in the waking world—like if he were to brush his hand against hers, or inadvertently touch his skin against the hair that spilled over her shoulders like tangible moonlight, an electric shock would sting him. Mykal almost _feared_ looking into those eyes for too long, as though he were looking upon two sacred gemstones he had no right to see. Something powerful resided inside of that girl; something he hadn’t felt before, a swirling luminescence that radiated an indescribable strength.  
  
Enric had always talked her up. This girl, this Rosalie Seeker, was the _Chosen One_. Mykal hadn’t known what that meant beyond the obvious implications. Enric hadn’t even given him a solid explanation, largely keeping the details of what he felt was his ownership over that girl and her title to himself. Aside from accompanying his master to Alderaan—and to the Zaladra System—Mykal’s involvement in anything regarding Rosalie Seeker was practically nonexistent.  
  
“Yes,” Mykal said, apologetic by default, “of course.”  
  
For a long moment they sat in silence, even so much as the other man’s breathing undetectable to Mykal’s ears. “What exactly do you plan to do?” Mykal asked. They looked at each other again. “I know your intentions; you’ve never been quiet as to that. But how?”  
  
Enric darkened the datapad, reaching forward to set it down on the console before him. There was a small smile on his face that Mykal recognized as bemusement.  
  
He grew defensive in the face of Enric’s levity. “Living on Corisdor is poison for anyone’s morals, but her?”  
  
Enric propped up his elbow on the chair’s armrest, his knuckles just brushing his lower lip. “Rosalie is only so useful to me while she’s loyal to the light side, and there is only so much I can do to alter that while I’m light years away from her.”  
  
Mykal sat up. “And how exactly do you plan to _alter_ that? She doesn’t seem very susceptible to me.”  
  
“She probably doesn't seem that way to herself, either. Only because she’s lived in the company of those who teach her to be otherwise. Only when she is removed from the environment that force feeds her one thing can she aptly decipher anything else.”  
  
Mykal snorted, his tiredness making him comfortable. “And what makes you so sure she'll listen to you? You haven't exactly laid the best groundwork for your relationship.”  
  
“I've laid the perfect groundwork,” Enric said, as though it were obvious, as though Mykal were missing a blatant truth. A hunger came to his eyes. “That's what removing her from the Order will show her—and you, as well.”

  


For the remainder of their trek, Rosalie was largely left alone. When she did have company, it was never Enric. Only Mykal, bringing her ration bars and bottles of water, though she couldn’t bring herself to consume them—no matter how much, by that point, her stomach ached with hunger. Whenever he brought her food, they would talk. He would ask her of Coruscant, if it had changed at all since he left. She learned he was born on Corellia, but his memories of his homeworld were overlapped by those of what he considered to be his true home. He missed it, he’d said; he still dreamed of the skylines, sometimes. She found kinship in that fact, the gentle smile that canted up the corners of his lips when he thought of Coruscant inducing her own memories of Alderaan. Only recently had she learned it was possible to smile when she thought of home.  
  
“What’s it like?” Mykal asked, early in the morning on the final day of their journey. They sat opposite each other on either bed, the toes of their boots nearly touching in the cramped expanse between.  
  
Rosalie looked at him. “Alderaan?”  
  
He nodded. “I’d only—” He cut himself off, ruefully glancing downward.  
  
“You’d only been there the one time?” Rosalie finished. The way she’d said it, so calm and neutral, made Mykal’s expression flush with slight surprise.  
  
“Ah—yes.” He shifted, wringing his fingers together. “Just the once.”  
  
Rosalie nodded, straightening her posture. She rested one hand on the mattress beside her, leaning her weight upon it. “I grew up in the capitol, Aldera—a city on a cliff in a range of mountains. It’s cold there, at least in Aldera; days when you couldn’t wear sleeves weren’t common.” Despite herself, Rosalie found her mouth softening into the shape of a smile. She had a special dress for days like that, pure white with a skirt that glittered when she twirled in it; no sleeves, but a silken hood to shade her eyes from the sun. “The snowcapped mountains right there—I could see them from my bedroom window. Could see the sun rise over them every morning.”  
  
Mykal smiled. “That sounds beautiful.”  
  
“It was,” Rosalie said, looking down at the floor, bringing both ands together at her lap again. “Still is, I’m sure. The Organas live there now—in the palace. I hope they love the mountains just as much as I do.”  
  
“Really?” he asked. “You don’t feel any…”  
  
Rosalie furrowed her brow. “Resentment?”  
  
It took him aback, how quickly she had sensed the word floating at the tip of his tongue before it escaped the bastion of his teeth.  
  
“No,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for anyone better to take my mother’s place on the throne than Breha Organa.”

  
  


When the engines’ gentle hum reverberating through the deck ceased to cold stillness, Rosalie felt it keenly. She flexed her toes inside of her boots, unused to the lack of microscopic vibrations stimulating her soles. She watched the ceiling as Enric and Mykal’s presences moved down from the cockpit, her hands unconsciously curled inward into loose fists. She worked to soften the tightness of her jaw as she felt only one sense move through the audience chamber and toward the bunkroom door.  
  
The door slid open, and Mykal stood on the other side. Rosalie could tell immediately that the man hadn’t slept a wink after he left her several hours beforehand; he had said he would try.  
  
“We’re here,” he told her, his hands clasped together in front of his pelvis. The edges of his hand wraps were curled with age, and he picked at them without seeming to realize it. The circles beneath his eyes were more pronounced, deepened in color by perhaps not lack of rest but emotional weight, and he fought to keep his lids above his irises. All the same, his chestnut hair was freshly washed and bearing dramatic waves. When Rosalie walked closer to him, she could smell soap and gentle florals.  
  
“Where is here?” Rosalie asked dryly. She grew conscious of the oiliness at her scalp, the fabric of her robes starting to grate uncomfortably against her skin. Despite herself, she found the vague hope of a proper shower waiting for her in her new prison creeping into her head. “Corisdor?”  
  
Mykal nodded. “Corisdor,” he confirmed. He moved half a step closer, leaning in slightly and lowering his voice. Mykal Zeras tried very hard to ease Rosalie’s whirring mind, and his effort, ineffective as it was, endeared her. “For what it’s worth, you’ll have a warm bed and warm food. You’re not going to be kept in a dungeon; you’ll have a room all to yourself.”  
  
Rosalie smiled knowingly. “A golden cage,” she said.  
  
Mykal found himself without reply. The sound of the boarding ramp lowering cut off their brief conversation with finality. She thought that her feet would again refuse to move, welded to the deck and reluctant to follow through with what she had bought with Ixchel’s safety, but when Rosalie moved forward, she did so smoothly. Her limbs voiced no protest this time, though they were stiff like beams of wood.  
  
“Rosalie,” Enric said, an icy fondness coming to the milky hues of his eyes at the sight of her. “Have you had a comfortable trip?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Rosalie said. Looking on his face never got any easier, especially after the most recent occasion she had seen it. The phantom pressure of his lips upon her cheek induced a shiver down her neck. “You’re very accommodating.”  
  
“You’ll find the Sapphire Palace even more so,” he said, placing his hand between Rosalie’s shoulder blades to guide her down the ramp.  
  
She walked just a little more quickly, an effort to assuage his touch. In response, he coiled his hand around her side, just beneath her ribs. Rosalie sucked in a breath, her hip colliding with the hard metal of Enric’s lightsaber as he pulled her close. His sense was searing to the touch with possessiveness; no words were needed to tell Rosalie to stay close.  
  
It was late morning on Corisdor, the midday sun beaming down brightly. As soon as a breeze came down over the walls of the newly built docking bay—crafted of blue-tinted stone and mirrorlike marble—Rosalie was hit with the smell of lemons and pepper. It was the same scent she recognized clinging to Enric’s clothes in the Zaladra System. It was light and pleasant when carried on the wind, effervescent but not weighing down the air. The sky was cobalt blue and swirled with wispy cirrus clouds, and the facade of the intricately designed palace which towered above them seemed to fade into the atmosphere.  
  
A wide archway connected the docking bay to a spanning courtyard. Its cobbles were bright white, the fountain at its center bubbling and glittering in the sunlight, a fine, dewy mist spraying for a couple of feet beyond its reservoir. The courtyard doubled as a garden, filled with shrubs with pointed, shimmery leaves, splashes of colorful plants, and lemon trees. Delicate pink petals, windblown from a blossoming tree beyond immediate eyesight, scattered the space over which Rosalie was forced to walk. She would have enjoyed being in a place so beautiful under any other circumstance.  
  
It was hard for her to imagine Enric there, inhabiting a sunbathed garden, surrounded by brightness and life and sweet-smelling flowers.  
  
The trio rounded a corner lined with towering walls of cobblestone, veined in-between stones by purple-black vines with small white flowers, and came upon a grand set of doors. Their coat of blue paint was glossy and fresh. It gave Rosalie pause, how the color lit up when the sun hit it. Jemmila Seeker’s face rose to the surface of Rosalie’s thoughts, namely her eyes. Impossibly blue, just a few shades darker than their mother’s, enchanting and mysterious though at the same time disarming and playful.  
  
Rosalie caustically mused that the color was an almost exact match. Her boots scraped gently on the ground as they stopped, awaiting the twin guards on either side of the double doors to pull them open. Her stomach twisted inside her, nausea slinking its way upward.  
  
The grand hall’s cavernous ceiling was supported by twin levels of ribbed white columns. Against the far wall, two curving staircases, lacquered white, led up to a mezzanine ornately lined with rose gold railing. High above them, a paned glass skylight let in the light of day, eliciting an airy, open feeling, as though they’d never left the garden outside—to everyone, perhaps, except Rosalie. The crisscross panes supporting the glass only looked to her like the wall of a cage.  
  
Everything was richly decorated, color saturating every fine detail, stark white off-setting the bright blues and little accents of yellow throughout the hall. The Sapphire Palace lived up to its name, Rosalie thought, taking in the sight of its brilliant sunlit decoration in slow breaths. Once again, picturing Enric Kelrian living amid such beauty was impossible.  
  
Rosalie’s eyes fell upon a curtain behind the white staircases before several figures emerged from behind it. It was a large archway, whatever room was on the opposite side separated from the hall with thick panels of pearly white fabric, which glinted like shimmersilk from far away. Three people pushed through the curtain, the soft swishing sound carrying across the otherwise soundless expanse with ease. At the head was a statuesque woman with dark hair that tumbled down to her waist and shone like a mirror, held out of her angular face by a headband encrusted with small golden jewels. As she drew closer, Rosalie could see the mild smile pulling her glossed lips across her teeth. She held the posture of a dignified politician, her ring-laden hands clasped at the crest of her hips.  
  
The woman’s soot-gray eyes flickered across all those in her company, but rested upon Rosalie the longest—curious, above anything—before landing on Enric. “Your grace,” she said fondly, revealing a smoky, textured voice flavored with a tone of jest.  
  
“Your grace,” Enric returned, the same feigned good will exuding from him. The two leaned into each other and exchanged half-hearted kisses on one another’s cheeks.  
  
“I’m so pleased to see you’ve returned in good health,” she said, pulling away to a healthy distance just slowly enough for the unacquainted to miss. She looked on Rosalie again. She pivoted, the black, glittering skirt of her dress scintillating with every small movement. Its sheer, dark bodice, embroidered with golden thorns, left little to the imagination of her breasts. “This must be our guest.” Silky and smooth, Outer Rim lilt slanted slightly away from the typical intonation of the region.  
  
“Shélin, this is Princess Rosalie Seeker,” Enric said, resting a hand on her opposite shoulder.  
  
The word _princess_ shook her, and she bit the inside of her cheek at the urge to shake off him off, the gentle weight of his gloved palm making her stomach feel watery.  
  
“Princess,” Shélin parroted, ink-black eyebrows perking. She seemed was with the title, but could feel its weight all the same.  
  
For the first time, out of necessity to keep an even countenance, Rosalie averted her eyes from the blinding sight of Shélin to look at the two straight-backed boys standing behind her. They couldn’t have been older than twenty standard years, either of them, their faces young and bright and their brown hair smoothed by product. Their senses were strained and nervous, not unlike Rosalie’s own.  
  
Enric returned his touch to the center of Rosalie’s back, pushing her forward minutely. “She needs a place to stay until the political climate of her homeworld cools down. I’m sure she’s still shaken from the events that have led her here.”  
  
Rosalie’s head began to shake in sour disbelief, but the coolness of Shélin’s rings upon her fingers interrupted her thoughts.  
  
“Of course,” Shélin said, clasping Rosalie’s hand. She pulled her forward, away from Enric, a move whose deliberateness gave Rosalie pause. “We are always happy to give shelter to others when they need it. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.” Shélin’s warm smile extended upward to her eyes, crinkling the sides and making them sparkle.  
  
Rosalie turned her head just enough to meet Mykal’s eyes. When their lines of sight met, he smiled and gave her a shallow nod. He had a higher degree of practice than she.  
  
“I’ll help you get settled, darling,” Shélin said, linking her arm with Rosalie’s like a chain. “We have more than enough quarters saved for guests of the court; I have the perfect one in mind already.”  
  
Even Enric seemed nonplussed for a moment, his honed eloquent formality returning to him after half a moment of consideration. “That sounds like a fine idea,” he said, half-turning toward Mykal. “Find Neela for me, would you? Bring her to the drawing room behind the audience chamber when you do.”  
  
Without further ado, Enric broke from the small gathering, giving Rosalie a small smile as he passed by her. She turned to watch him go, staring at the back of his head. So out of place among the glamour—just as she was. So removed from her erstwhile home in royal splendor, the Core Worlds princess inside her stirred with the distant familiarity of it all—the itch to fall back into the role she was torn from.  
  
But with a gentle tug on her arm by Shélin, the pillowy daze Rosalie had found herself in sloughed away. Mykal tried poorly to hide how he was looking at her.  
  
“Come,” Shélin said. And that was all she said, leading Rosalie toward the leftmost staircase. Rosalie’s legs were leaden as they ascended the pearlescent white steps. The further they walked upward, the deeper the darkness surrounding Rosalie became, suffocating with the sensation of descending into a dark cave. The parasite lingering in her head was alight, sparking her nerve endings with its incessant prodding.  
  
If Shélin could see Rosalie’s composure dampen, she gave no hint. “You’ll have to forgive my unfamiliarity with the Sapphire Palace,” she said, making Rosalie wonder if they had taken a wrong turn somewhere; all of Shélin’s movements were purposeful enough that even her mistakes must look intentional in a way that made them appear to be part of her plan all along. “I spend most of my time in the Ruby Palace in the southern country.”  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“That’s where I’ve lived all my life—the southern country, I mean; I was only elected lord five years ago,” Shélin described, walking with a gait so smooth her head remained completely level. “Lord Kelrian and I joined our regions last year, in marriage.” Disdain was hidden behind the neutral tones in her voice, detectable to a practiced ear. Rosalie looked at Shélin sidelong, confused.  
  
“You married him?” she asked. It was hard to imagine a real Human being beneath Enric’s cruelty, even so much as his physical form standing in front of her, touching her in the real world, something otherworldly after so many years of his phantom torture from far away. Things that counted as normalities for other people, namely marriage, just didn’t match him. It was like he was a shadow, an embodiment of darkness, clumsily trying to disguise themselves as a corporeal being.  
  
“I did,” Shélin said, guiding Rosalie around a corner which led into a long, wide hallway bathed in sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the right-hand wall. The light was cut into latticework, shadows of intricate designs cast across the women’s faces by fragile golden panels over the glass. “Our regions were nearly at war. Bringing them together was the only way we could quell the tensions.”  
  
Rosalie looked at the side of Shélin’s face, regal and pointed, and wholly unrevealing. Shélin was silent on what tensions nearly brought two countries to war, but Rosalie lacked the desire to know; she had a fair assumption already, remembering what Mykal had told her of how Enric came upon his position of power there.  
  
“We’re in a time of peace,” Shélin said, pulling Rosalie closer against her side. “You’ve come to us at a wonderful time, Your Highness.”  
  
“Rosalie is fine.”  
  
The pair came upon the end of a brightly lit hall, its vaulted ceilings high and rich with intricate paintings. Shélin loosened her grip and furrowed her brow, stopping in front of a double door.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
Rosalie smiled, mostly amused at Shélin’s reaction to the disruption of formality. “I’m just Rosalie.”  
  
Shélin looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “Very well.”  
  
Shélin’s aides stayed outside as she led Rosalie into the room. Respectable in size, though small as far as royal accommodations went, Rosalie blinked at the uneven shift in the Force. The air in that room felt almost palpably dimmer, its air thick and heavy. The muscles in her feet went taut with careful steps as she walked further inside, diverging from Shélin’s side. Against the far wall was a bed made lavishly with sage and dusty periwinkle, an off-white canopy hanging by its four wooden posts. The ceilings were dizzyingly high, rounded and painted the same shade of gray-white as the walls. A latticed set of doors led out into a balcony, a soft spring breeze coming through the holes to rustle Rosalie’s hair. Many works of art filled space along the walls, but Rosalie’s stomach clenched at the sight of a moss painting, the landscape depicted unrecognizable and generic, but the style all too close to her heart.  
  
The tips of her fingers found the supple surface of a vanity made of reddish-brown wood, taking in the unfamiliar items laid across. Things that resembled makeup containers and perfume bottles, but different enough that Rosalie wasn’t sure. She looked up into its mirror, seeing the ragged markings of exhaustion all over her face.  
  
Shélin came up to her left shoulder. “I’ve never seen anyone like you, Rosalie,” she said, brazenly turning Rosalie to face her and moving thick tresses of silver behind the girl’s shoulders.  
  
Rosalie was so taken aback that all she could do was chuckle.  
“Forgive me for being so bold,” Shélin laughed, her gray eyes lighting up as she drank Rosalie in, glittering despite the darkness of their color, “but that _hair_ , and those eyes! Where did Enric say you were from?”  
  
_He didn’t_ , Rosalie thought bitterly. Another warm wind carried with it the scent of lemons, and Rosalie’s face fell quicker than she could catch it. “Alderaan.”  
  
“Alderaan,” Shélin said, thoughtful. “I’ve never heard of it. But if your beauty is anything to go by, I must visit.” After an extended moment of examining Rosalie’s face, Shélin clicked her tongue. “You must not feel like yourself after your journey, especially having left your home the way you did.”  
  
Rosalie let out a long breath, feeling less like Shélin was speaking to her in present-day than she was to the ten-year-old version of her. “I am rather tired,” she said.  
  
“There’s a refresher down that way,” Shélin said, gesturing vaguely to her left. It was true—just off the main portion of the bedroom was what looked like a small sitting room, and another doorway just off of that, which presumably led to the aforementioned refresher. “There’s also a change of clothes, if you desire. Well, many changes of clothes, actually. I apologize if there’s little that fits you; Corisdorian women almost never reach your height.”  
  
Rosalie put on a good-humored smile. She had never really felt self-conscious about her height until then.  
  
Shélin chuckled in response and lay both of her hands on either of Rosalie’s shoulders. This time, the latter was somewhat prepared for the brash invasion of personal space. New cultural customs always took time getting used to. Shélin looked into her eyes deeply, and the Force between them grew heavier. Not influenced by Shélin herself, but by what she was trying to convey, as though her sense had become leaden, and her gaze penetrating. “I want you to feel at home for as long as you are here, Rosalie,” she said. “Corisdor is a beautiful world, and court is splendid. Just now, the redberry trees will be blooming, summer festivals will be underway. Get your mind off of what brought you here; enjoy it.”  
  
She gave a gentle shake of Rosalie’s shoulders and turned to leave. Just as soon as Rosalie had caught the peculiar shift in Shélin’s sense, it evaporated like dew. But left in its place was a feeling of warmth, the kind of security found in a kindred feeling. Rosalie stepped forward to stop Shélin before she left.  
  
“He’s not my friend,” she said, her voice as steady as it had been since the Zaladra System. “Before, you said a friend of _his_ is a friend of yours. He’s not my friend.”  
  
Shélin turned at the door, one hand upon its handle. She shook her head gently, a sardonic quirk coming to her lips. She seemed almost glad. “He’s no one’s friend, dear,” she said. “But it’s all the better for everyone if we pretend.”

* * *

Anger radiated from inside Asrai’ev like a starburst, but his exterior composure never faltered. Every now and then, his eyes would close for a long moment, his knuckle pressed into the apex of his upper lip. Anyone who saw the brief ritual knew what it was.  
  
It was night on Coruscant, the training room the group occupied empty save for them, and lit only by soft, low lights inlaid in the walls. It was one of the smaller rooms, typically reserved for one-on-one lessons away from larger teaching sessions.  
  
“Can you feel her?” Anyarah Sesslyn’s voice broke the relative silence of the room, sweet and quiet. She didn’t know Asrai’ev well; she hadn’t even spoken much about him with Rosalie. Speaking to him, a general in the Grand Army of the Republic, she felt like a little girl.  
  
He turned to look at her, his hand still propped up by his mouth. He dropped it down to his side. “Yeah,” he answered. Furthermore, he spoke to everyone and no one at the same time. “I can feel exactly where she is.”  
  
“So, why aren’t we there right now?” Tylan asked, impatience sharpening his tone to a bite.  
  
Asrai’ev gave a bitter laugh. “All right, Padawan Hart, what’s your plan?”  
  
Tylan stood up angrily, spreading his arms and pacing. “Why are you even here, huh? _General_? What expertise are you gonna provide us?”  
  
Despite the outburst, Asrai’ev chuckled under his breath. He would have been irritated if he didn’t feel a hint of amusement at the boy’s ignorance. “Rosalie’s a friend of mine—has been for a long time.”  
  
“She’s a friend of _everyone’s_ —”  
  
“ _And_ I have tactical and strategical knowledge that’ll help get her back here safe and sound better than shouting about how angry you are that this happened will,” Asrai’ev said, nary raising his voice above a polite conversational level.  
  
Tylan looked at him for a long time before relenting. “Whatever, sure,” he said. “If you’re so knowledgeable, how are we gonna get her back?”  
  
“ _We’re_ not gonna do shit,” Asrai’ev said, folding his arms.  
  
Before another argument could erupt, Rein broke her own solemn silence. “General Kalar’aa, Knight Vih’Torr, and I will be leading the rescue mission,” she said.  
  
“And by _leading_ ,” Verena said, dejected, “you mean not taking anyone else.”  
  
“A few clone troopers,” Rein said. “The Council considers it a favor that they’re letting the three of us do it our way in the first place. Besides, we don’t know what we’re walking into; we can’t risk more lives than necessary.”  
  
“Can _you_ feel her, Rein?” Anyarah asked, shifting uncomfortably. “Do you know where she is?”  
  
Rein nodded slowly. “I do,” she said through a sigh. She moved to the center of the congregation, extracting a small holoprojector from a pouch on her belt. She set it down on the floor and toggled it, sending a spray of small white-blue pinpricks through the air, connected by faint lines representing trade routes and hyper lanes. It wasn’t a map of the galaxy, only a portion of it.  
  
“The Expansion Region?” Tylan asked.  
  
Rein nodded, stepping back and breathing deeply though quietly. Reading maps was one of the greatest challenges in learning to utilize Force Sight. She hadn’t yet mastered it, but with great concentration she could see just where in the Expansion Region the Force was directing her. “Here,” she said, pointing at a small dot toward the upper edge of the map. “It’s undocumented; I couldn’t find anything about this system on the HoloNet, not even a name.”  
  
“Perfect place to hide someone you don’t want found,” Asrai’ev said, amber eyes setting on the minuscule representation of the system like a bird of prey.  
  
“Somewhere the _HoloNet_ doesn’t even know about,” Kaidin, thoughtfully quiet until then, said, approaching the edge of the blue-tinted map and meeting Anyarah’s eyes through the glow. They shared a doleful look, Anyarah’s delicate shoulders shrugging sadly.  
  
“It’s a long way from Coruscant,” Rein said, her tone slipping into that of a commander. “Three standard days, maybe, if we use the quickest route and a good hyperdrive. Lots of star clusters and gravity wells along the way, though, so it’s dangerous.”  
  
“I can fly that,” Asrai’ev said, already picturing the ride in his head. “Half the shit holes the Council sends me to have trickier routes than that.”  
  
Tylan sighed, moving about uneasily, clearly chewing on what he wanted to say. Rein looked toward him, catching wind of his agitation quickly. “Tylan,” she said, drawing his attention. He was shaken by her intensity. “Verena? Anyarah? We’re going to bring Rosalie home. I’m not returning to Coruscant without her.”


	7. seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains a scene of sexual violence.

Rosalie was restless by herself. No one came to visit her after Shélin left, their registers in the Force only lingering imprints on the edge of Rosalie’s conscious mind. Her true focus was not on Corisdor, but elsewhere in the galaxy entirely. As Corisdor’s sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the city of Zlesia in warm, orange-golden light, Rosalie stood upon the balcony, steady hands gripping its smooth surface so hard her knuckles turned white. No matter how much she tried to extend her reach beyond the planet’s atmosphere, she could not. Her near-meditative trance was broken by a sharp pain stinging the back of her head, like an animal had gnawed at the base of her skull. Her hand flew protectively to the spot, but the pain melted away just as fast. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the overpowering light of the sunset, fiery and vibrant, painting the few clouds that hung in the now-pale sky a dusty pink. Rosalie sighed, her fingers curling into a loose fist at the nape of her neck. Just another punishment from afar, a disembodied scolding for her attempt at reaching her friends.  
  
Only when her mind was again in tune with her body and where she was, the smell of lemons in the air grew thick and sickly sweet, carried on a cool evening breeze that tousled her hair. She retreated inside to escape it, leaving the sunset to bow beneath the horizon and give way to the night unwatched. Struck with a great deal of self-awareness, Rosalie fidgeted against the grimy feeling of her inner tunic, and her eyes drifted in the direction of the refresher. After a brief moment of consideration, she made a few long strides toward the door and searched for its locking mechanism. Thankfully, though disconcertingly, it was a quite simple one: a small knob just above the rightmost handle which, when she turned it horizontally, locked the doors from inside. While she wished she had more security, she took what she got.  
  
The refresher was modern in comparison with the rest of the palace, though not as advanced as those she was used to. From floor to ceiling, it was paved in glittering blue-green tiles, glasslike and scintillating in the waning evening light pouring in through the wide window over the bathtub, itself smooth and pure white, large enough for several people to fit into.  
  
Every moment she spent there was drenched in paranoia, her eyes locked on the door as she undressed and filled the ceramic bathtub a quarter of the way with steaming water. She never got completely naked, but instead shed all of her outer clothes and used small cloths to wash her body of its accumulated sweat and dirt. She used a small cup to pick up water and pour it over her hair, scrubbing soap into the roots with her fingers. Against her dampened skin the air was freezing cold, but it felt fresh and invigorating.  
  
She was reticent to accept Shélin’s offer of Corisdorian clothes, but replaced her inner tunic with a clean dark blue shirt made of soft, slick fabric, peaking out above the dark-hued collar of her robes just an inch. She smelled like sugar and pine, a scent that made her heart pang in an odd, distant way. She sat at the vanity and braided her hair back how it was, giving her hands something to do while her mind worked anxiously. The prodding of Enric’s mind into hers had calmed whilst she bathed, but gave way just a few moments after she finished with her hair to his physical presence returning.  
  
Rosalie’s hands fell from her quickly drying hair when she heard the knocks. She could feel the resonance of them, as though he’d rapped his knuckles against her breast bone. Her body ran cold, the long silence in the moments that followed draining the heat from the air. By then, night had fallen, and Rosalie had barely noticed. She stood up, hugging her arms around her ribs. Her legs carried her closer to the door, slowly. He seemed willing to wait there all night.  
  
An intangible pull drew her forward, her right hand reaching through the frigid air for the lock. Her body was stiff and her mind stir crazy, curious and whirring for answers, leading her to do something she immediately regretted.  
  
With the door unlocked, she retreated back near the bed, as if distance would matter now that she had damned herself.  
  
Enric pushed one side of the door open soundlessly, his steps inside the room undetectable to Rosalie’s ear. He closed the door behind him with unsettling gentleness. He was smiling softly, as though he were checking in on a willing guest. In a room alone with him, so close, she could feel her knees threaten to buckle, her stomach tightening, her vision going gray and blurry around the edges as memories bubbled up to the surface. She clamped down upon them, trying to force them down just as the bile in her throat, but her calf hit the edge of the mattress behind her as she unconsciously backed up, trying to distance herself, and the soft blankets of her childhood bed were against her palms again.  
  
That room wasn’t hers, not really, but all the same his casual, smooth gait as he passed through it felt invasive. Always the intruder upon whatever space had been assigned as hers, like he enjoyed tainting whatever was called Rosalie’s, leaving traces of himself upon all she touched and inhabited. In the moonlight, her lightsaber glinted upon his left hip, and her notice of this halted him.  
  
Enric canted his brow, as if just remembering his possession of the curved weapon she had crafted tirelessly by hand, a necessary replacement of her erstwhile saber after she cemented her commitment to Form II: Makashi. “Ah,” he said, a warm, quiet sound, silken. “You’d probably like this back.”  
  
He unclipped Rosalie’s lightsaber from his belt, cradling it in his left hand as he extended it out to her. He didn’t move within her reach, forcing her into the choice of either accommodating his further intrusion or inviting him to do so himself. “It was purely a safety precaution. I’m sure you understand,” he said. “On a world like this, you’ll need protection.”  
  
An excruciating moment passed in silence, their eyes dead on each other’s. He burrowed into her corneas from afar with fine, invisible needles, the points of syringes digging in to the far reaches of her mind to extract whatever they found. At last, the vulnerability he expertly instilled within her with something as simple as a stare got the best of her, and she defied him. Rosalie spread her palm open, and her saber was carried through the air in one rushed, albeit fluid, motion, the Force’s unexpected tug on the weapon leaving Enric to stumble just so, taken aback by her defiance of his expectations.  
  
_You really thought I would let you any closer_ , she thought, the cool alloy of her lightsaber a welcome rush of adrenalin. Her thumb hovered over the switch to ignite the blade, a humming undercurrent of antipathy heating the very air they breathed to boiling. “I’m sure I will,” Rosalie said.  
  
Had she not the Force, Rosalie wouldn’t have been able to detect the flash of rage that coursed through Enric at that moment, for his face was ever amiable. If anything, the integrity of his smile shook her more strongly than if he had flinched.  
  
“I hope,” Enric said, “that your evening has been comfortable.”  
  
“Why did you bring me here?” Rosalie asked.  
  
Enric’s demeanor fell slightly, purposefully, every adjustment of every muscle in his face a calculated movement. “I told you,” he said. “Someday you’d realize why.”  
  
The image came back to her in a nauseating rush: Enric’s thumb smearing the slick warmth of blood across her chin, a gesture accompanied by that cryptic promise, spoken from between lips speckled by the same shade of red which stained her nightshirt.  
  
“This,” Enric continued, “is to help you do just that.”  
  
“This,” Rosalie said, caustically incredulous. “For your own sake, I hope you’re not so deluded as to think taking me hostage will _help me_ see you any differently.”  
  
“I don’t want you to see _me_ any differently, Rosalie,” he said, theatrically placing a hand against his chest. Rosalie wondered if he could feel his pulse against his palm when he did that, his own body’s warmth, or if it was like putting your hand to a block of duracrete. “There’s only one version of me, and it’s who you’re seeing right now. Tell me what you see when you look at me.”  
  
Rosalie’s brow knitted at his sudden command, but she had an answer at the ready. She gnawed briefly on the fleshy inside of her lower lip, working the words up from her tightening throat. “I see their faces,” she said, her grip upon her lightsaber’s hilt adjusting. “I see what you did to them.”  
  
“Them? Who’s _them_?”  
  
“My—”  
  
“Your parents,” Enric said, taking a step forward, speaking with all the softness of one giving condolence, “your sister.”  
  
Rosalie started to back up in response to his advance, but her spine found the bedpost behind her.  
  
“That’s one way of looking at them,” Enric said. Another step. “Another way—perhaps a better way—is selfish and prejudiced, caring more for keeping you for themselves than letting you follow your true destiny.”  
  
Fire spread through Rosalie’s chest, her lips coming apart in the beginnings of a snarl. Quickly, she righted herself, pressing her mouth closed and forcing a deep breath to cool the rising flames about her lungs. _Don’t let him rile you_ , she told herself. _He would love to see you riled_. He had spoken ill of her family before, attempted to infuse resentment into her thoughts of them as she slept. Hearing those wretched insinuations again shouldn’t sting any worse. “And what is that, as far as you’re concerned? My _destiny_?” she asked, courage blossoming in place of the anger she had doused. In its wake, her voice became firm, and her knees grew steady. “What makes you think the Jedi have it wrong and you have it right?”  
  
Enric smirked again, a vicious and poisonous cant to his expression, and a contrast to the easy tone of his voice. “That’s a good question. At the end of the day, no one truly knows what the destiny of the Chosen One is. It just so happens that the Jedi have a prettier story than others.”  
  
“Your story must be beautiful, then,” Rosalie said. “If it’s going to make me pledge myself to you.”  
  
Enric took another step, larger that time. A shock went up through the tips of Rosalie’s fingers and through her arms, as if she’d touched a bare wire.  
  
“I don’t have a story; I have the advantage of an outsider’s perspective,” Enric said, spreading his hands. “When you’re enveloped by the Jedi dogma all your life, seeing things differently than their Code permits grows difficult. Sometimes, you need someone to help you break free, and see another way. A better way.”  
  
Rosalie tasted blood before she realized how hard she was biting down on her cheek. Before she could speak, Enric continued.  
  
“You’re not my _hostage_ , Rosalie; you’re my guest. My _welcomed_ guest. The only way you’ll be confined to this room is if that is where you choose to stay.”  
  
“What makes you think I won’t kill you before you get the chance to show me a better way?” Her lightsaber glinted in the moonlight as it shifted in her hand, her thumb grazing over the ignition switch ever more readily.  
  
She expected Enric’s face to fall to something venomous, the promise of something cruel, but it only lit up with intrigue. His lips fell apart, the shine of his tongue running across the bottom edges of his upper teeth. It was as if he liked how it felt when she threatened him, like he was playing with a kitten whose bites he knew wouldn’t hurt. Rosalie’s skin was alight, her composure a challenge to keep.  
  
At last, a low chuckle left his mouth. “You? Killing?” he asked. “Given your introduction to the subject of _murder_ , Your Highness, I expect it may take you a while to warm up to it. We should start slowly.”  
  
Rosalie’s lightsaber ignited in a half-meter of indigo plasma, its loud _snap-hiss_ ringing throughout the room. She swung a deadly strike toward his neck, but he parried it just as quickly, his lightsaber an imposing ash-gray that nearly blinded her from its proximity to her face. Rosalie couldn’t imagine a louder sound than the electric clash of their blades. She slid her lightsaber down the length of his, forcing his body over. She went for his neck again, but his parries were lightning and her mind was muddled with emotion. With expert precision, taking advantage of the kink in her fluidity, Enric slashed the very edge of his blade across the hand guard of Rosalie’s lightsaber, knocking the weapon from her hands. He slammed her back into the bedpost by her throat and retracted his blade, sending the room into silence again. Her ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton as they adjusted to the lack of noise, so soon after their cacophonous duel.  
  
She could feel his influence upon the Force keep her in place, only a half-inch of space between their bodies as he dipped down to speak against her forehead. Their brief altercation hadn’t winded him in the least.  
  
“Like I said: you’ll need to worry about the people of Zlesia far more than me,” he said.  
  
Rosalie jerked her head away from him, their closeness setting her skin on fire. She almost laughed. “How can you say that with a straight face?”  
  
“Because I,” he said, loosening his hold on her throat just so, “don’t want to hurt you, Rosalie. I want to help you, guide you. The people out there—to them, you won't look any different from me. They'll know what you are the moment they see you. They know something you don't; maybe it'll pay to listen.”  
  
Desperation to be rid of him stung the corners of Rosalie’s eyes. Her stomach tightened and twisted with every morsel of compulsion he tried to feed her. “I’m nothing like you.”  
  
Enric looked down at her for a long moment, that same excited, hungry longing illuminating his eyes with a poisonous glow. He returned his lightsaber to its place on his belt. “There it is,” he said. “All that doubt.”  
  
Enric’s grip tightened as he kissed her, hard and purposeful. Rosalie’s mind went blank for a dizzying few seconds, whirring and screaming and utterly barren all at once. The strength that her legs had rediscovered melted away, and they threatened to fail entirely as he forced her lips apart with his tongue. His hand slinked away from her throat and curled around a fistful of her hair, sending a wave of nausea through her that brought her senses back to life. Her body pinned against the bedpost, Enric’s other hand groped up her side. Rosalie twisted her head away from him, freeing herself from his kiss long enough to gasp a ragged breath.  
  
His lips found her neck then, teeth sinking into the flesh beneath her jaw in a feral bite. Rosalie pawed at his hand as it moved harshly about her chest, but her fingers were numb and ice-cold. She only then was able to hear her own breathing again: sharp, hitched mewling sounds. She could feel acutely the tears pooling in her eyes as Enric breathed into her ear, hot and fervid. Every contour of his body against hers was a knife cutting into her skin.  
  
_You’re mine_ , he told her. He didn’t use his voice to say it, moving his mouth to hers again. Through the Force, he told her: _You belong to me_. An invasion inside her mind as he bit and bruised her mouth, hungry to sample the fruit of his fixation, leaving neither her body nor her thoughts untouched in those cruel, unending moments he had her there.  
  
At last, Rosalie found enough strength to dig her nails into his neck, scratching deep marks into his skin. She finally shoved him away as he clutched at the wound. He didn’t bleed, but she could taste blood in her mouth, her lips swollen and painful. Enric looked at his hand as he took it away from his neck, looking for redness and finding none. She expected rage to twist his features, she expected retaliation, but he only licked his bottom lip and looked back at her, a sparkle in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Every moment his gaze rested upon her, she couldn’t breathe.  
  
“I’ll let you get some rest,” he said. “You’ve had a very long day.”  
  
Enric turned his back to her and walked toward the door, without another word. She watched him warily, gripping onto the post behind her for support. Until he opened the door and stepped halfway through it, she never shook the expectation of him turning around and hurting her again.  
  
He looked back at her once more. “Sleep well, Rosalie.”  
  
As soon as the door shut behind him, Rosalie only partially felt herself collapse to her knees, her breath coming out in uneven heaves. She crawled away from the bed, pressing her back against the bedroom wall. She curled her body into a protective ball, burying her face in the crook of her elbow to muffle sobs she couldn’t stifle. It hurt to move at all, every inch of her body upon which he left unseen marks felt aflame. Crying left her lightheaded and deepened her exhaustion, but she stayed awake in that spot, her sore, red eyes watching the door, until the light of dawn began to peak over the horizon and chase away the night.

* * *

__

__

His presence was everywhere. Even as pale daylight spilled into Rosalie’s bird cage, she couldn’t shake the darkness looming in the corner of her vision. The bite on her neck had darkened into a fledgling bruise, tender to the touch. A shallow split on her lower lip seeped with blood whenever she shifted her mouth the wrong way. When she regained the strength to stand, she couldn’t sit back down, continuously pacing about the adjacent rooms she inhabited. She had absorbed none of their details, the intricate decorative habits of Corisdorians all graying out around her. Her mind kept going back to Coruscant, where Ixchel was safe and out of Enric’s hands. She had accepted the cost of such a reality, but actually paying the price left her skin crawling with invisible insects, inflamed by her constant scratching and rubbing where he had touched her.  
  
Rosalie’s mind was unkind to her in the hours she spent awake. She silently thanked that it didn’t get any worse the night before, that she had found her strength again when she did. She knew he wouldn’t have stopped if she hadn’t made him, those chilling words he had forced to echo against the inner walls of her skull affirmation of his intentions.  
  
Her thoughts were fractured by a knock on the door. It sent an anxious jolt through her stomach, but the presence behind the door itself soothed her nerves.  
  
It was evident that Shélin Arroyo’s extravagant apparel the day before was routine. That morning, she donned a bright red dress with golden trim and delicate embroidering, sheer in most places with a layered skirt that flowed like a stream when she walked. Her hair was tied up this time, knotted behind her head with spider-hair ribbons of gold woven into the strands. Rosalie blinked, Shélin’s grandiose appearance striking her all over again.  
  
“Good morning, Rosalie,” Shélin said, smiling. At the center of her lips was a sheen of gold, and her eyelids were shaded a rich black. Amid the cool blue of the Sapphire Palace, she was a shower of sparks. “Have you eaten yet, since you arrived?”  
  
Rosalie shook her head. “No.”  
  
“I thought not. You must be famished.” Shélin glided into the room, carrying the scent of unfamiliar, warm spices. Behind her followed two servants who carried in an ornately carved pale wooden table, big enough to seat two people. Rosalie’s head came out of its fuzziness more quickly as several other servants she’d never seen before brought in two chairs, as well as short side tables upon which they would rest platters of food.  
  
“What’s this?” Rosalie asked lamely. Her arms still hugged around her middle, though she was only half aware.  
  
“Eat with me,” Shélin said, lifting opaque lids off of the platters, revealing spreads of deep greens, cubes of brightly colored fruit, and hearty breads. She thanked the servants with a promise of small payment, and sent them away. Noticing Rosalie still stuck in place, she gave an airy laugh and said, “Come! Sit down.” Shélin’s touch upon her shoulders made Rosalie flinch, but the older woman seemed not to notice.  
  
Guided into the cushioned seat, Rosalie’s hands steadied her body by gripping its sides. The aromas of food made her mouth water, her body deprived of nourishment, but her appetite was slow to follow suit. At Shélin’s urging, Rosalie mechanically poured herself tea from the large glass pot at the center of the table, hosting a blooming lotus flower inside the hot water, and took a puffy, domed roll from a basket full of them. It smelled of vanilla and pepper, a peculiar combination she was surprised to find she liked.  
  
“So,” Shélin started, spooning vibrant fruits onto her plate, “how was your night? I do hope you slept well. After your long journey…” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Rosalie. “Gods, Rosalie, have something! You’re as thin as a willow as it is.”  
  
Rosalie forced a smile, and looked down at the roll she placidly held in her fingers. At the comment, she could practically feel the soft outlines of her ribs poking against her clothes. Her mother had been taller than she was and rail-thin, and passing down her long bones and lissome build to all three of her children had left Rosalie with little chance to gain much noticeable weight at all, other than the muscle put on by rigorous training. But what accentuated her thinness was stress, taking away her appetite and stalling any hunger pangs that would eventually compel her to eat a meal in the Temple refectories. Even when she was given mandatory breakfast, most days she only picked at it and ate half, at most; the dreams she had most often left her nauseous and weak.  
  
She tore off a piece and hesitantly placed it in her mouth. The bread stuck to the roof of her mouth, its savory sweetness almost overbearing, but she knew her body would thank her for the calories.  
  
“Poplar begins today,” Shélin said, excited. “It’s a festival in Zlesia celebrating the onset of summer. On Corisdor, our summers last many months, and they’re the most joyous time of year. Crops thrive, rain is seldom, lemons grow in abundance. And there’s a different festival happening every other week, it seems.” She sipped on lotus tea, holding up the index finger of her free hand. “You’re going to _love_ Poplar, Rosalie. I can tell you’re a festive woman just by looking at you.”  
  
Rosalie chuckled, wrapping her hands around the cup of steaming mauve-colored tea. “I suppose,” she said.  
  
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you dressed in some proper clothes before we leave.” At Rosalie’s curious glance, Shélin shrugged through a bite of bread. “I’m not letting you go into Zlesia in those.”  
  
Her tone was protective, leaving little chance for misunderstanding. Rosalie’s fledgling hunger again submitted to sickness. She forced down a drink of hot tea to wash down the thick lump just behind her tongue. As she pulled the cup away from her mouth, she let the steam flow in wispy tendrils over her face. She could see small bits of lotus petals floating in the liquid.  
  
“Enric has told me quite a lot,” Shélin explained. “I know more than you may think I do. You wear similar robes to his, you carry a lightsaber, just like he does—you’re different, obviously, but they won’t see that.” She tipped her head toward the balcony doors and the bright blue sky beyond. “All they see is the precedent he set for those robes and that lightsaber. They'll see you and equate you, the power you possess, and everything else, to him.”  
  
Rosalie found herself curling the fingers of the hand she rested on the table into her palm. She wasn’t taken aback by Shélin’s knowledge; it made sense that Enric would divulge to her the mysterious ways and culture of the Jedi, if only to hear himself sound impressive. “And why is that?” she asked.  
  
“Because he’s the only example they’ve ever had of the Force,” Shélin said, lacing her fingers and resting her chin atop them. “Granted, he was mine, as well, but I’m not an idiot.”  
  
Rosalie snorted despite herself. “And they all are?”  
  
Shélin smiled. “Most of them, yes. More so, I like to utilize the power of _reason_ as often as possible. Enric talks about the _dark side_ so passionately, I know there must be a _light_ side somewhere. It only makes sense. And I can only assume that’s the side you’re on, hm?”  
  
Rosalie nodded.  
  
“Well, it won’t matter to them,” Shélin said, shaking her head, averting her eyes downward. Her expression was subtly spiteful as she spoke on her subjects. “They only know the Force as something that maims and kills. And they've been shown that so much and so often that convincing them that it's any different is nearly impossible. It’s a sour truth, but it’s the one we have.”  
“ _You_ seem to have been able to separate the light from the dark very well,” Rosalie said. “Especially for someone so close to him.”  
  
“He's never harmed me. Never killed anyone I loved, never hurt a hair on my head. Why? I'm appealing to him. I've given him a wider range of power than he could have usurped by himself, I smile vindictively when he speaks of his horrors, I express interest in his collections of hair and blood and I ask him how he does it. As a politician, you learn very quickly how easy it is to fool people into thinking you're similar to them. Similar enough to make them feel safe, like they don't have to worry about you. Evidently, at least to my knowledge, it's only a little bit harder to fool a Jedi.”  
  
Shélin sipped her tea, and Rosalie furrowed her brow as she watched her. Rosalie knew about politics, how easy it was to fool a senator or a governor. As young as six, she had seen her father do it, holding her close to his side as he gleamed at those he would later disparage in private. One day, when she had just turned eight, she stood in-between Marich Seeker and Bail Organa as Chancellor Palpatine gave them both his pleasantries. Rosalie couldn’t clearly remember meeting him personally before, though he expressed amazement at how much she’d grown since he’d seen her last. She felt Marich’s hand tighten over her shoulder, but his smile shone bright. Palpatine pinched her chin as he remarked her beauty. He seemed very, very nice, and Rosalie began to like him. She watched them act like kind friends until the chancellor left their company, and Marich at last spoke candidly. The words were whispered over her head and into Bail’s ear, Marich trying and failing to evade Rosalie’s keen ear.  
  
“I’ll rip that bastard’s hand from his arm.”  
  
Rosalie never forgot how much that anger had shocked her, how it jostled her perception. Ever since then, instead of wondering how her father could be so rude as to call a seemingly kind man names, she kept a close eye on the chancellor whenever she saw him, trying to see what Marich saw. If he was so angry with Palpatine for touching Rosalie’s chin just for a second, he musn’t be kind at all.  
  
After she asked Marich why he didn’t like Chancellor Palpatine, one day after dinner, he sighed. After that, he didn’t hide any of his feelings about his colleagues from his protege. She learned how to cast a smile and give kind words to those she might wish to snarl at, how to keep up appearances in the Grand Concourse and let those who thought her father adored them continue overvaluing their worth to him.  
  
“All politicians are liars,” Marich told her, his hands weaving her hair. “That means I am, too. And if you’re going to be a politician, you’re going to have to lie all the time. If you’re dead-set on it, I may as well teach you early.” They laughed, and he turned her to face him after finishing her braid. She would never forget his face lit in soft candelight, the high collar of his sweater framing his stubbled face. “Remember: you only ever lie if you absolutely have to. It isn’t something to take lightly, not at all. Senators absolutely have to lie all the time, but otherwise, _always_ tell the truth.”  
  
Politicians were easy to fool, Shélin was right about that. Even a child could do it. But Enric wasn’t a politician, and he was impossible to fool, no matter how well Shélin thought she had succeeded. Enric Kelrian was disgusted by dishonesty, and could sniff it out without trying. If he gave no indication of knowing that Shélin was attempting seductive trickery, he was surely one step ahead all the same, collecting her falsehoods as kindling for a fire to engulf her in.  
  
“Perhaps,” she said, “when you encourage is torture and his killing, the thrill it gives his ego distracts him from the fact that you don’t really mean it. For the time being.”  
  
Shélin cocked one eyebrow, looking at Rosalie for a long, silent moment. Outside, birds chirped high-pitched songs, and leaves rustled in the summer wind. “Maybe,” she said, though Rosalie could tell she didn’t buy it. “But until then, I meant what I said about those robes.”  
  
Rosalie would have taken her chances, if she’d been given the option. But Shélin’s insistence wouldn’t be defeated, so Rosalie took the clothes proffered to her into the sitting room off the bedroom. She half expected an ostentatious dress, thick with jewels and embellishments, but Rosalie was pleasantly surprised. Quickly, she slipped on black linen pants that hugged her legs. Over her head she pulled a long, layered burgundy tunic, secured around the waist with a thick leather belt and laced up to her collar bones. The wrap boots Shélin had given her were just a bit too small, pinching her toes together, but they breathed better than her own. She could already feel the forgiving nature of the lightweight fabrics as Corisdor’s heat grew thicker with the morning’s age.  
  
She refused to leave her lightsaber behind, though, fastening it to the waist of the pants beneath the tunic. She had acclimated to the styles of worlds she visited many times over, the change from her standard uniform nothing jarring. But wearing the dress of this world—Enric’s world—made her uneasy.  
  
Shélin was sipping more lotus tea, standing by the now open balcony doors, when Rosalie came out. The former spun around at the sound of footsteps, graceful in even the finest minutia, and beamed. “You look wonderful!” she praised. “I chose red, as opposed to blue, so you’ll look to be in my company.”  
  
Rosalie began to smile curiously, but the pain in her lip made her flinch. As she lifted a hand up to the wound, it struck her that Shélin had said nary a word about it, nor the mark on her neck. Perhaps she had also seen the scratches across Enric’s neck and connected the grim dots, and thought she best not talk about it at all. Rosalie folded her arms. “Why as opposed to blue?”  
  
Shélin crossed the room and set down her cup on the way. She reached up and straightened out the top of Rosalie’s shirt where it rested over her collar bones. She tried not to back away from the touch, while not grounded in malice, sudden and uninvited all the same. “Those who can afford to _choose_ their clothes tend to stick to the color schemes of their countries,” Shélin explained, pulling Rosalie’s hair over her shoulders. “Southern Carro favors red; Northern Carro favors blue. There are never many southerners at Poplar the first day; we’re always fashionably late.” Shélin chuckled, grabbing hold of Rosalie’s left hand. “Come along.”  
  
In truth, Rosalie wasn’t against the trip outside. All she had seen of Corisdor was the Sapphire Palace and one of its courtyards. Letting herself be towed at Shélin’s side, greeted eventually by the lord’s bright-eyed aides, Rosalie just tried to breathe. She wasn’t safe even in her confined quarters, but still every step she took farther from them felt more treacherous than the last. The longer layers of her tunic brushed against her knees, startling her every other time she noticed.  
  
“You will still attract attention, I’m afraid,” Shélin said, coming up to the crest of one of the two grand staircases in the grand hall.  
  
“Because I’m with you?” Rosalie asked.  
  
“Well, yes,” Shélin said, bobbing her head to the side. “But that which clothes can’t cover up, more so.”  
  
It took Rosalie a moment to understand. “Ah.”  
  
“ _I_ think you’re a wonder,” Shélin said, her tone casual for the grandeur of the compliment. “In the south, blonde hair isn’t uncommon, so you might get away with it there, if nobody looked at your eyes for too long. But up north, having hair lighter than planting soil is seen as a unique trait.”  
  
Rosalie suppressed a laugh, only to give her lip a chance to mend. Now that her thoughts had cleared, she made a note to herself to heal it later, when she had a moment alone.  
  
More often than not, people simply thought Rosalie had near-Human blood—as she had once thought herself. Unless they were familiar with Jedi lore, that was the assumption most took, and she was fine with that. As for Corisdor, she had no idea what to expect, given the implication of its closed-mindedness. But she couldn’t bring herself to care, no stranger to the feeling of a gawking stare.  
  
Almost as soon as their feet touched the slick marble floor of the hall, there was a hitch in their plans. The Force pulled on Rosalie’s focus, a tug that led her eyes to the blue doors. Behind them whirled panic and pain, burning emotion swirling in an agonized eddy. Rosalie stopped in her tracks, jerking Shélin to a stop along with her. One of the aides bumped into Rosalie’s shoulder, though she barely felt it.  
  
Two young women shoved open the doors and spilled through them, followed by the guards stationed outside. Blood coated their faces, trickling down in skinny rivers from gaping wounds upon their foreheads.  
  
“My lord!” one of them yelled. She had black hair, tangled and wet with blood. She jerked away from the assistance of a guardsman. “Help us, please!”  
  
Rosalie was kneeling before the girls before she felt herself run to them, Shélin at her side. The second girl, a southern blonde with curly hair cut short at her ears, was barely conscious. Rosalie ignored the sharp dip her stomach took as she pushed the girl’s hair out of the way, sticky with warm blood. Her injury was startling, a perfect circle of skin taken from her forehead, from her brow to her hairline.  
  
“By all the gods,” Shélin gasped, clutching her stomach and covering her mouth. The other girl was just the same.  
  
“Do you have a medbay here?” Rosalie asked, gathering the blonde in her arms. Shélin looked at her, confused. “An infirmary, a hospital? Medical supplies, anything!”  
  
“Oh.” Shélin shook her head, attempting to gather herself. “Yes. Of course we do.”  
  
“I can heal them myself, but only so much.” She looked toward the other girl, more aware than the one she held. “What happened?”  
  
Through her pain, the girl started to open her mouth, but was prematurely silenced by something over Rosalie’s shoulder.  
  
She hadn’t even noticed his presence amid the chaos. Rosalie craned her neck and instantly stiffened, her body struck with a sweeping chill. Her protective instincts over the girls sprawled in front of her made her hold onto the blonde more tightly at the sight of him.  
  
To her surprise, Mykal Zeras was the first to speak. He walked at Enric’s righthand side; at his left walked a girl, small and skinny with kinky auburn hair held back in a puffy bun. She couldn’t have been any older than seventeen.  
  
“By the Force!” Mykal exclaimed. He knelt by Shélin’s side, laying his hand flat against the side of the black-haired girl’s head. “What happened?” he asked Rosalie.  
  
“I just asked that same question,” Rosalie said, collecting the blonde in her arms to carry her. She lifted her with ease, making sure her head rested against her shoulder.  
  
“You two,” Enric’s voice boomed. The two guards stood up straight, their armor clinking with the quick movement. His eyes lingered briefly on the circles of missing skin, flashing with confusion. “Did you see anything?”  
  
“No, my lord. They came running up to the doors from outside the courtyard.”  
  
Without a pause, Enric turned away from them in irritation. He stooped low to pick up the other girl, who was going fuzzier by the second. She was like a ragdoll in his arms. Rosalie had to stop her stomach from challenging her again, something more important than her own discomfort at hand.  
  
“Lock the entrances to the courtyards,” Enric said, in no particular direction but clearly addressing the guardsman. “All of them. Gardens, too.”  
  
He adjusted the girl in his arms as he walked up to Rosalie. “Come with me,” he told her, jerking his head to the side. He spoke with less an air of concern than one of annoyance. As if this was all just an inconvenience to him. “The infirmary is this way.”

* * *

It was almost a proper medbay, what the Sapphire Palace had for its sick and its injured. Rows of beds lined either wall of a long room. Its walls were white-painted stone, detailed with blue vines. Rosalie questioned the skylight above, doubting it kind to patients bound to their backs to have the sun in their eyes, but ultimately gave little thought to the intricacies of the architecture as she worked. Likely thanks to Enric, there was bacta aplenty. After Rosalie cleaned both the girls’ faces of blood, and patched up one horrific disfigurement temporarily, she poured the Force into healing the other. She couldn’t regrow the skin itself, and the palace physicians had no idea what the word “synthflesh” even meant, so they would be scarred permanently. Rosalie regretted this, but her greatest priority was staving off infection by accelerating their healing process as quickly as possible.  
  
By the time she finished, applying a final layer of bacta gel over the rough, sunken circle of scar tissue on either forehead and wrapping them in gauze, her muscles were screaming. She took a moment to exhale and stretch her back, wincing at the soreness embedded beneath her shoulder blades. She’d forgotten how much exertion Force healing took, and in the moment had given it no consideration.  
  
A Corisdorian nurse administered them both a liquid called milk clover, a sedative that would put them to sleep a long while. Rosalie was largely glad for their chance at rest, but curiosity and the urge for answers ate away at her. She racked her brain for whom would do such a thing, give such a particular violent marking and leave the victim alive. She didn’t find any otherwise injuries save defensive wounds on either girl. Flecks of coagulated blood remained in their hair, a sight she viewed with a tired sigh.  
  
When Rosalie finally emerged from the infirmary, the girl Enric was walking with sprung up from her seat on a windowsill. “Are they okay?” she asked, her low brow in a worried knit. She only came up to Rosalie’s shoulders. Her caramel skin was flush.  
  
“They’ll be all right,” Rosalie said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Are they your friends?”  
  
“Yes,” the girl breathed. “I hadn’t heard from them all day, and they said they’d be back from the bazaar before midday so we could go see Poplar together. You’re sure they’re okay?”  
  
“I’m sure.” Rosalie smiled warmly, smoothing out her voice. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Neela. I’m Neela Ranon.”  
  
“They’ll be okay, Neela, I promise,” Rosalie said.  
  
The door at the end of the hall opened, and Mykal stepped through it. He walked briskly up to the pair, his gaze lingering on Rosalie. “You look…”  
  
“Tired,” Rosalie finished. “The girls are fine. They’ll be shaken, but…they’re fine.”  
  
Mykal nodded, glad. “Good. Thank you, for helping them.” His lips canted up, just a bit, earnestly appreciative.  
  
“Of course,” Rosalie said, letting herself share the expression. “Does anyone have any idea—?”  
  
“No.” Mykal set his hands on his hips, pacing a small section of the floor. “Even Enric doesn’t know.”  
  
Rosalie caught his eye. “Are you sure?” she asked dryly.  
  
Mykal stopped, letting out a long breath. Finally, he shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not. This isn’t something he’d typically do, but…it’s silly of me to think there’s a standard for his behavior.”  
  
Neela shifted uncomfortably, her large brown eyes averted to the floor. Before Rosalie could divert the conversation, Mykal did so for her.  
  
“Hey,” he said, brightening his expression, drawing Neela’s attention toward him. “I’m going to go sit in on a discussion with the city guard. Why don’t you keep Rosalie company for a while? Show her around? Something not terribly exciting.”  
  
Excited, Neela nodded. “Okay, Mykal.”  
  
“Wonderful.” Mykal pressed a kiss into the crown of Neela’s head, patting her cheek as he moved down the hall. Over his shoulder, he met Rosalie’s eyes again. It was evident that his Force abilities weren’t the strongest, but he was able to communicate to her well enough. _I’ll try to find out. Just relax; you’ve done enough._  
  
Rosalie was struck with a warmth that was a mixture of gratitude and sorrow. A kind soul resided somewhere inside of Mykal Zeras, but his loyalty to Enric Kelrian was a stain upon it she wanted to, but couldn’t, look past. It was hard to believe the same man who bid that sweet, brotherly farewell to Neela Ranon was the same one who was on Alderaan that night eight years before.  
  
“So.” Given a task, Neela perked up. She had straightened herself out, her juvenile restlessness giving way to an intelligent glimmer in her eyes. When unflustered—or at least pretending to be—Neela was mature, professional. “I’m going to keep you company.”  
  
Rosalie smiled, barely noticing her lip anymore. “You are.”  
  
Neela, only coming up to Rosalie’s shoulders, led her out into the hallway. Something about walking in the opposite direction from where Mykal had gone to see Enric and the city guard gave her comfort. “What is it you do for him, exactly?” she asked.  
  
“For Lord Kelrian, Your Grace?”  
  
Rosalie nodded, deciding against correcting her.  
  
“I’m his squire. I…accompany him on diplomatic trips, advise him in court when need be, pen his letters. I help him with everyday things—though he seldom wants much help at all, in the ways most lords do.”  
  
Rosalie looked down at Neela as they walked, coming up to an intersection of hallways. “For how long?”  
  
“Three years.”  
  
“Is he kind to you?”  
  
Neela nodded, her tone more serious now. “He is kind to me, Your Grace. Kinder than he is to most.”  
  
“He’s never hurt you?”  
  
They slowed to a stop at the converging halls. “Never,” Neela said. She paused for a long moment, considering. “I thought he might. But he never has.”  
  
She wasn’t lying. _Thank the Force._  
  
They stood in silence for a few seconds before Neela brightened again, as eager as Rosalie for a change of mood, “Have you seen the library yet?”


	8. eight.

“I’m just getting used to datapads,” Neela had said, guiding Rosalie through rows of paper pages bound in painted hide, “but I like them a lot. I like books more, of course; they don’t hurt my eyes as much.”  
  
The Sapphire Palace’s library was as grand as any. The written word upon fibrous paper was uncommon in the technologically advanced world Rosalie lived in, but Corisdor had it in bountiful supply. Rosalie’s parents had kept a few books in a special, locked case in the den of their personal wing in the Royal Palace. They were mostly history books, detailing wars of the galaxy’s past and time periods long lost to speculation, but one of them was filled with fantastical stories, little bite-sized fairytales. On her birthday, Rosalie would be read stories from that book, allowed to look upon the inked relic and rejoice in its wispy, achromatic illustrations. Neither Jemmila nor Saul were nearly as enchanted, but it was indescribably special to her.  
  
_I wonder if Uncle Jaiye kept that book,_ Rosalie had thought, running her fingers over the cover of the first of three personal recommendations Neela would procure for her, _or if the Organas have it._  
  
Had she the chance, Rosalie would have put that book in her keepsake chest before she was swept away to Corsucant—if only for the reassurance of knowing where it was.  
  
She had been calmed by Neela’s enthusiasm, her young brightness melting the top layers of bitter ice that overlaid Corisdor’s very air. She was still concerned about her friends, Rosalie could tell that much. But when given an opportunity to stroll the rows of the palace library, the cloud of auburn curls atop her head bounced with her gait.  
  
Rosalie found herself smiling as she sat on the edge of her bed that night, flipping absently through thick, stocky pages. She also found herself thinking about Neela Ranon, and where she may be at that given moment. Her mother had a personal attendant during her time as queen, though Rosalie could scarcely remember her. A teenage Alderaani girl with light brown hair and whisper-thin eyebrows—that was all that came to mind. No name, other than a vague impression of three or four syllables Tura had spoken once in reference to her aide. Rosalie had a memory of the girl handing her a glass of a sparkling, fruity drink at a gathering once, in Belleau-a-Lir; she was perhaps seven or eight. She wondered where the nameless brunette girl was now, where she had been since her queen was murdered and her position was erased.  
  
Whatever the answer, and however little Rosalie had seen her personally, that girl had spent countless hours with Tura Ta’Shi Seeker. Rosalie had never gotten old enough to be acquainted with the familiarities of the duties of royal aides, and both Jemmila and Saul wanted to delay taking them on for as long as possible—forever, if they could—so she didn’t have them to ask about it, either. But what she did know was that aides practically never left the side of whom they served. So much as Rosalie’s memories of the brunette girl faded into uncertainties of so much as her name, she almost never saw her mother without her aide just behind her right-hand side.  
  
Which left her wondering if Neela was by Enric’s side right then. She had to make herself remember Neela’s honesty when she said he had never hurt her, but Rosalie’s stomach twisted all the same. A small songbird in the jaws of a snake, never closing down around her downy neck, but always threatening. It was late, well past midnight, but she knew better than to think the time of day really mattered to dignitaries—or Enric Kelrian.  
  
Rosalie set the book down beside her and reached out, just to see. Just to settle her shivering nerves. She let her eyes close and searched through the winding halls of the Sapphire Palace, searching for Neela’s soft, light presence. But she found something else along the way, an invisible draw, a gravity her mind was pulled toward with a forceful tug. She gasped as she felt it drive through her sternum: a reverberating echo of pain.  
  
Her eyes flew open, and without thinking she pushed off of the bed and ran for the door. She flung it open and dashed into the dark hallway, following the twisting, worrying impression upon the Force. It wasn’t like the two girls, more dire, calling upon her more intensely. The disturbance guided her down a hall she was unfamiliar with, moonlight filtering through the palace’s myriad spanning windows, latticed shades cutting dark shapes into Rosalie’s path. The luxuriously colored palace was colorless in the moonlight, muted by shadows that seemed unfitting—the ornate royal dwelling was suited for eternal sunshine to shine upon its eccentricities.  
  
A nondescript door opened just as she began to pass it, and she skidded to a halt. All of the air in her lungs left her in a swift and dizzying rush.  
  
Klaxons screamed in her head, a wave of regret crashing over her and nearly knocking her to the floor. She had taken his bait yet again.  
  
Enric stood at the top landing of a long, winding staircase. Fresh, wet blood was on his clothes and his face and down his neck, blending into his hair, the hand with which he grabbed Rosalie’s unsuspecting wrist as warm and slick as the one pressed over her mouth. “I knew you’d be quick.”

* * *

____

____

Rosalie wrestled against him, but the overwhelming stench of viscera weakened her inexorably. The blood coating his hand seeped between her lips, sticky and coppery-sweet. The soles of her boots hit the stone floor of the spanning basement hard, knocking against Enric’s as he forced her forward. His strength overwhelmed her own, just as it always had. Glowlamps affixed to the walls illuminated the scene that sent Rosalie’s stomach plummeting: a girl strung up to the ceiling, naked, arms pulled taut above her head, tied at the wrists, wet strings of black hair hanging about her face like a claw-torn shroud. Her lips were inflamed and shiny with blood. The tips of her fingers, intermittently twitching, were cyanotic blue.  
  
As Rosalie’s eyes scanned over the rest of her, black dots spotted her vision. Cuts and gashes, deep enough for the white of her bones to peak through the red and pink mess, inches of muscle glistening under the light of the glowlamps where skin had been flayed away; her face was mottled with blood bruises and swollen, saliva dripping from her lower lip as it hung open, split down the middle and unable to close; the girl was conscious still, just barely, and tiny sounds escaped her mouth. They sounded like foil crinkling. Small bruises and deep red marks marred her breasts and collar bone.  
  
Rosalie didn’t want to look at her, nor the blood in a half-coagulated pool on the floor beneath her, nor the sanguine rivulets traveling down her legs and adding to the growing circle drop by drop, but she was petrified.  
  
Enric’s voice, low and penetrating, cut through the thick, hot air of the room. “I was hoping you’d get to see her,” he said, inching Rosalie forward. “Her name is Asha. She reminds me an awful lot of your sister. Do you remember how your sister looked? Of course you do.” He adjusted his hand over Rosalie’s mouth, slick and sticky. The smell stuck in her nose and made acid rise to the base of her tongue.  
  
“I don’t typically bring dark-haired girls to the palace, you know,” he continued, his hand clamping harder around Rosalie’s arm. “I prefer blondes.”  
  
His breath disturbed the small hairs just above Rosalie’s ear, and she could feel his eyes on her. Not on the girl, whimpering just quietly enough to catch an attentive ear, but on the silver-white braids speckled with half-dried blood from his robes.  
  
“But I remembered Jemmila, around when I decided you’d spent enough time on Coruscant,” Enric said. “She had the most beautiful, long hair. Do you remember how soft it was?”  
  
Her sister’s name passing his lips brought the Force to Rosalie’s hands, shoving him away from her with a hard push that made him stumble. She ignited her lightsaber and turned to face him, Asha hanging behind her back. The girl’s agony and Enric’s satisfaction melded in the Force and settled a swell of nausea in Rosalie’s gut. The glint in his eyes did nothing to quell it, nor soothe her growing anger.  
  
“That’s good,” Enric said, encouraging, paying no particular mind to the blade pointed at his throat.  
  
Rosalie breathed hard, swallowing down the retort she knew he wanted. She had to remember how he loved seeing her angry, how he pawed at that heat in her chest like a new toy. Just by putting her lightsaber between them, she’d given him something. Even with the cards in her hands, the advantage was his.  
  
A small noise drew her eyes over her shoulder, and the sight of Asha jarred her all over again. Blood dripped onto the floor still, tiny sounds that took her back too many years, too quickly. Her swollen eyes, brown and glossy, looked nowhere through half-shut lids. Rosalie hoped she was somewhere else inside her mind, tricking herself into believing her state another than near-death.  
  
Rosalie’s eyes turned upward to the rope, and the taut muscles of the girl’s arms, stretched beyond pain. Her shoulders were contorted in odd angles, pulled out of their sockets and jutting out beneath her skin. Sparks bit at the soles of Rosalie’s feet, and she wrapped an arm about Asha’s rip cage, raising her lightsaber to cut through the thick cordage. Asha fell limply into Rosalie’s arms, the latter holding her close against her body. Her black hair was matted and wet; it smelled of must and blood. Rosalie’s face, already smeared with blood, came away with more when she set Asha down against a wall, trying her best to keep her sallow body balanced upright. Her arms were lame at her sides, mangled and torn like an animal had taken to them. The smell coming off of her was rancid, though strangely perfumed. The scent wasn’t one Rosalie could identify, thickly floral and unfamiliar—and overtaken by the stench of necrosis as soon as it came. Up close, she could identify the marks on Asha’s breasts as those left by teeth.  
  
Rosalie looked up at Enric again. “How can you do this?”  
  
He was unperturbed by her cutting his victim down, almost as if he’d known she would. He had to: he knew her too well to think she wouldn’t try _something_ , a fruitless effort or otherwise. “This? Her?”  
  
“All of it,” Rosalie said. Slowly, she rose to her feet, one hand still hovering protectively by Asha’s hair. The threat of tears made her voice raw, to a degree beyond her ability to level it. “ _Everything_ you do, how can you live with yourself?”  
  
Enric gave a gentle, quiet laugh, just barely a bemused huff of breath. “That’s the question every Jedi asks a darksider at least once, isn’t it? Before they learn that the answer is the same for every one of them.”  
  
He began to step forward and to the side, the beginnings of circling her, but she rose her lightsaber to him again, unactivated. “Stop, I warn you.”  
  
This time, Enric’s laugh was heartier, just so. He took a breath to speak, but she cut him off.  
  
“Why did you show me this?” she asked. Rosalie could feel Asha’s presence getting weaker, her register in the Force starting to fade. The pool of blood below where she once was was coagulating in the cold, stagnant air. The phantom sensation of her hard bedroom floor against her back made her spine tingle, the pool beneath Jemmila’s dripping feet the same perfect circle as this one. She swayed in place, but she caught herself and blinked the memory away. “Why did you show me her?”  
  
Enric was too keen not to notice Rosalie falter, and smirked as he looked to the trail of dark red droplets leading to Asha’s ravaged form. He began his slow, circling pace again. This time, Rosalie didn’t stop him. “You seemed so curious, snooping around my ship. So wont to learn. All these years, I’ve never been able to show you in person, much to my regret. Perhaps doing this earlier would have saved you some trouble. You can't go your entire life fainting at the sight of a little blood, can you?”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about? _You_ did that to me!” Her voice rose, and he visibly approved.  
  
“What I did was show you a reality you were going to be acquainted with one way or another. You are right, Rosalie, I'll give you that: perhaps I could have been a bit cleaner. Laid some towels down, perhaps.”  
  
“Enough.”  
  
“But either way, you know you couldn’t keep the charade going. Sooner or later, with you among them, they'd be dead. Because of me, because of someone else, it doesn't matter. For all Palpatine wanted the Seekers out of his hair, maybe it would have been him. Regardless, you were a liability to them ever since you were born. Your mother knew that, but she kept you, anyway, hiding you away like a precious gem that might be stolen.”  
  
Rosalie shook her head, a bitter laugh rising up her throat. “And that isn’t what you want to do? That’s not what you’re doing right now?”  
  
Enric ignored her question, shrugging one shoulder in accordance with his own train of thought. “Who knows? If you had stayed with them long enough, you'd find out they were lying to you all that time and maybe you'd even do it yourself.”  
  
Her face darkened, her lips parting in a fledgling snarl and heat simmering in her chest. She struggled to quell it, to douse the flames that licked her lungs with light from inside herself, but the engulfing darkness around her fought hard against her attempts. Rosalie desperately wanted to deny Enric the satisfaction of seeing her wince as the resonance of his darkness worked its burning, oily-slick way down her tongue and through her chest, but his growing smile told her he felt it already.  
  
Enric stopped walking, coming to a halt closer than Rosalie had realized she let him get. She could see more clearly now the drying blood on his face and neck, the scratch marks just beneath his jaw he didn’t seem eager to heal. “The Force flourishes around you, Rosalie,” he said softly. “You give life to it, you make it grow. The same is true for those in your presence.” His eyes took on an eerie, penetrating focus, digging into her.  
  
“And you want me all to yourself.” She could feel herself getting stronger, coming out of her momentary lapse and pulling out light from inside her own depths.  
  
“It's always hard to accept at first—the dark side. It would be lovely if you did, dear, but it doesn't matter if you do. The dark side doesn't require your acceptance; nor do I.”  
  
She detested his power to chill her to the bone, so little as a few words able to break her resolve just long enough to let the cold inside. A cold that nearly matched the dying girl on the floor behind her, fading faster by the second, beyond Rosalie’s help from the first. Rosalie fought the urge to look over her shoulder and watch the shallow breaths that rose Asha’s sunken chest and brought it down again, the pause in-between longer each time. Rosalie’s reach in the Force idled just inside the mechanisms of her lightsaber, and she locked Enric’s eyes with a fierceness that both surprised and delighted him.  
  
“I should kill you,” Rosalie said.  
  
Enric perked his brow. “So, why don’t you?” he asked, matching her low volume. “I make you hesitate.”  
  
As soon as she moved to ignite her blade and slash toward his neck, to cauterize the blood in his jugular vein before it spilled out of a fatal wound, he matched her quickness and rose his hand. Enric’s invisible grasp froze her body in place, seizing her muscles with a gentle curl of his fingers.  
  
Her bedroom floor was hard against her spine again, the smell of her sister’s blood in her nostrils. Every time she tried to move and break free, she could feel the throbbing in her left forearm, freshly punctured and injected with poison that stole her ability to move. Enric moved perilously close to her side, and the edges of her vision blurred black. Her lungs burned; his hold on her was so absolute that she could barely breathe.  
  
“If you really wanted to kill me,” Enric said, brushing his knuckles down the length of Rosalie’s hair, “you wouldn’t hesitate. Would you?” He settled his hand on her lower back, pressing the pads of his fingers against her hip bones. “One of these days, I’ll have you finish the job yourself—when it’s less of a shock. But I think that’s enough for now.”  
  
Enric moved his hand up to the base of Rosalie’s skull. At the lightest touch, she felt her consciousness be torn away, and the metal alloy in her hand fall from her grasp as it went limp. Her world tipped upward, and the last thing she felt was a hard arm across her back.  
  
“We have plenty of time.”

* * *

Rein felt like she’d explored every inch of the heavy, industrial ship afforded from the Grand Army of the Republic. It, and the LAAT it carried, was Asrai’ev’s doing. Both Rein and Kaidin would have been comfortable taking a skiff, something sleek and fast, but they had to accommodate for the some twenty-five clone troopers they were given. The general had made sure they got the best.  
  
But it felt hollow, like a collection of metal and wires and fuel and not much more. The smell of coolant and industrial cleaning liquid was strong in the halls Rein walked, its psychometry barren save the distant whispers of past clones and Jedi commanders. Even if she could hear their resonance above the softest whisper, Rein wouldn’t listen. Her heart ached with a strength she’d never known, another ceaseless pang coming with every instance she imagined turning her head to the side and talking to Rosalie. Commenting to her about nothing, telling her things she may not know about these kinds of ships, remembering the times they’d been on them together—asking her what it truly looked like. They were two inseparable beings separated by brutal distance. The presence of Rosalie Seeker by Rein’s side such a normality, so expected, that coming up short of that luminous, blooming girl under the dreadful circumstances she found herself in was nothing short of agony.  
  
Rein didn’t realize she had made a full circle back to the cockpit until the toe of her boot hit the step just before its entrance. She gasped and came back to her senses, steadying herself. She pondered whether or not to go in and disturb Asrai’ev, whom she could feel inside the spacious, coolant-perfumed room, standing silently and alone. Rein swallowed as she thought about her own loneliness, the constant downward drag of her heart, and thought he must feel the same. She knew that, when all was said and done, if she had stowed herself away to stew in her own misery, she wouldn’t have minded a friend providing their company—asked for or not.  
  
Rein toggled the door, and pistons hissed as it slid open. Asrai’ev was leaning over the control console, seemingly mulling over whatever was on the display screen before him. He broke from his concentration and looked over his shoulder, giving a small quirk of his lips and a nod.  
  
“Thought you were gonna change your mind for a second there,” he said wryly.  
  
Rein snorted and shook her head, walking up to the controls and casting her eyes in the direction of what she knew was the chaotic, mangled blue mess of hyperspace. She leaned her forearms on the back of the copilot’s chair. “Only considering how grand of an entrance I should make, general. How is Kaidin?”  
  
“Meditating,” Asrai’ev said. “Has been for the past—I don’t know.”  
  
Rein nodded. “We could all likely benefit from a session right now.”  
  
Asrai’ev laughed quietly to himself. “I couldn’t.”  
  
Rein nodded a second time. Her mind was racing a mile a minute; surely his was, too. Rosalie had only told Rein about her surreptitious bond with the Jedi Shadow two thirds of a year ago, one third of a year after it had begun. They had never gone into the more intimate details of their relationship; Rein had never even seen them embrace, only exchange cordial, respectful nods, so incredibly careful to conceal their feelings from unforgiving eyes and minds.  
  
“Would you ever tell the Council?” Rosalie had asked her one day, on-assignment far away from Coruscant. “About Asra and me?”  
  
Rein had thought about such a prospect for a long time before the question had been posed to her. Conflict had made its home in Rein after Rosalie’s revelation. Her own hands weren’t clean when it came to the Jedi Code—in her more cynical moments, she wondered whose truly were—and it would feel hypocritical to rat out someone else. Surely the Council would let Rosalie off with a warning should they find out—after all, what other choice would they have?—so the consequences within the Order wouldn’t be dire. But the consequences within Rosalie herself, those would be terrible.  
  
It was clear to Rein that Rosalie felt more for Asrai’ev than a girlish crush or a fleeting lust—she loved him. Wholly and deeply, the all-consuming way the Council was afraid of. “No,” Rein had told her, taking one of her hands in her own. “I would never take that away from you.”  
  
Tentatively, Rosalie had asked, “You don’t think it’s wrong?”  
  
“I think that you, most of all, deserve something that makes you so happy.”  
  
“So, you met this guy.” Asrai’ev’s voice sloughed the memories away, and Rein’s brow perked in renewed attention. “Any idea what I should expect?”  
  
Rein let out a long breath, deft fingers playing with the edges of her hand wrappings. “ _Met_ is a kind word,” she said dryly. “More so, I _saw_ him—so much as I can; I felt him. It’s a feeling that I won’t ever forget.”  
  
“How’s he different than any other darksider?” Asrai’ev asked, an edge coming to his voice. “What makes this bastard so special?”  
  
Rein shook her head. “There’s something. Something inside of him that’s…rotten, and corrupted. Like a piece of him has died but he still carries it with him. I’ve seen Dark Jedi before, I’ve encountered any number of darksiders in general, but…I think it is his obsession that makes him feel different.”  
  
The meaning wasn’t lost on Asrai’ev, who leaned one hand on the back of the pilot’s chair, gripping it with unconscious strength. “His obsession with Rosalie.”  
  
“Yes,” Rein said. “He’s fixated on her—like she’s the crux of his existence.”  
  
Asrai’ev chuckled bitterly. “Generally, I’ve found the crazy ones are easiest to get the best of.”  
  
Rein shrugged wiltingly. “I’m not sure he’s crazy. Psychotic, more like.” She rested her chin upon the heel of her right hand. “Something tells me his delusions make him more dangerous than most we’ve faced before.”  
  
She could feel Asrai’ev’s quizzical eyes on her. “You know, I’m going into this pretty blind here,” he said. “You think maybe you could give me some insight?”  
  
Rein stood straight again, sighing under her breath. “Even I don’t have much insight, Asrai’ev,” she said, turning to face him. “What I do know are things that Rosalie should be the one to tell you.”  
  
An undercurrent of nervousness buzzed in Asrai’ev’s sense, the worry that already ladened him heightened by Rein’s cryptic explanation. “What d’you mean?”  
  
“It’s too personal,” Rein said. “She confided them in me, and she should confide them in you.”  
  
Asrai’ev looked at her for a long time, searching her face. She knew his frustration stemmed not from her reticence, but the implication behind it. He was already on a knife’s edge, anger burning red inside of him at the thought of Rosalie in malicious hands. The fact that it was personal—more personal than either of them could know—and not something as simple as a ransom, detached from emotion or vendetta, made his skin crawl.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, finally. “I’m going to bleed him out, regardless.”

* * *

Ixchel Erri was glad to wear her robes again. She needed to gain a couple pounds back to fill out the sleeveless ensemble, but the feeling of the fabrics against her skin again was joyous. She had just finished securing the criss-crossing armbands that stretched from her upper arm down to her wrist when her short-lived happiness was interrupted. Ardeth Brolen knocked on her door in the dormitories, and her teeth immediately clamped down upon each other. She turned and looked at the door for an extended moment, letting out a deep sigh at the man’s doleful attitude. She had been his apprentice for two standard years, and in that time she had never been able to penetrate the barrier of resentment deeply enough to understand how he could so often be so tragically morose.  
  
She flicked her wrist, and the door opened. “Come in,” she said, incredulous.  
  
Ardeth’s brow raised in surprise. “Thank you,” he said quietly, stepping into the softly lit room. The door shut behind him automatically, and his eyes flickered across the empty bed on Rosalie’s side of the room.  
  
Ixchel tried not to follow suit, folding her arms. “What do you want?”  
  
He took a deep breath and composed himself, clasping his hands together at his pelvis. “I wanted to apologize.”  
  
“Apologize,” Ixchel parroted, turning her back to him and walking toward her desk. A small mirror stood upon it, and in it she carefully tied up a third of her hair with a small elastic band. “Go on, then. Apologize.”  
  
Ardeth bristled. “There’s no need to be—”  
  
Ixchel spun around, hands falling from her hair and balling at her sides. “You know, actually, there is. I was kidnapped and held hostage by a Dark Jedi. You’re my _master_ ; you’re kind of supposed to make sure _exactly that_ doesn’t happen.” At the sound of mechanical whirring, her eyes fell to the glove covering Ardeth’s right hand as it adjusted. “It’s nice you have a memento of the occasion.”  
  
“Ixchel, please, calm down,” Ardeth said, stepping forward into her space. She stiffened. “I know what you’re going through is painful—and I know that pain is because I failed to protect you.”  
  
“You don’t know shit about what I’m going through,” Ixchel said lowly. “You never have. Ever since the day I was apprenticed to you, you’ve acted like this is all some fun game. Like I was fresh out of my Initiate Trials, ready to go on some big life adventure with you.” Her voice rose as she spoke, her hand throwing out to the side. “Like the first five years of my life as a Padawan could be erased and I could start over. Now I went through one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, had to come back here and sit in a healing room while my best friend is in the hands of a Dark Jedi, and you come in here thinking a well-thought-out _sorry_ will smooth it all over.”  
  
“I’ve never once,” Ardeth said, gently extending his living hand out toward her, “tried to erase Trista, Ixchel. If I gave that impression, I _am_ sorry.”  
  
“The list of apologies goes on,” Ixchel said, turning to look out the transparisteel window, gazing out across the Coruscant cityscape. “You don’t have to bother.”  
  
“What happened to you was a result of my incompetence,” Ardeth went on. “I couldn’t protect you from danger—I failed you. And for that I _must_ apologize.”  
  
“The Council is reassigning me,” Ixchel said, looking still out to the metallic landscape before her. Silence fell upon the room like a weight, and the Force swirled with confusion and hurt. “I’ve only spoken to Master Yoda about it, but he said he’ll talk to the others.”  
  
Ardeth sputtered. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“It’s clear we’re not compatible,” she said coolly. “Not just to me.”  
  
“Ixchel, this is a conversation we should have had together,” he said, stepping forward to lay a hand on her shoulder.  
  
She shrugged him off, refusing to turn around. Even if it weren’t him, she was still reluctant toward being touched. All of her injuries had completely healed, not even a whisper of a bruise left on her body, but the phantom pain of Enric Kelrian’s violence persisted in her both mentally and physically. “It’s a conversation that’s already happened,” Ixchel said. “Two years is more than enough of a trial period.”  
  
Ardeth was at a loss, his sense in the Force deflated, floating lower to the ground as the seconds drew on. “I haven’t heard anything from the Council about this.”  
  
“They’re gonna talk to you tonight,” she said, irritation sharpening her voice. “That’s what Yoda said.”  
  
Silence descended again, but it wasn’t long before Ardeth again extended his hand and spoke with conviction. “This doesn’t have to end in our separation! The bond we share—”  
  
“Not every apprenticeship works out like a fucking fairytale, all right?” Ixchel lashed, finally turning around to see the impact of her words. At Ardeth’s recoil, she pulled herself back and breathed. She could hear the lecture in the High Council Chamber already. “I _had_ that bond with Trista—and that’s gone. I barely even know you.”  
  
“And that wasn’t your choice?” Ardeth asked, his brow knit. “Your reluctance to—”  
  
“I would have tried,” she interrupted. “But I’d just lost the only mother I’ve ever had and you made the whole thing about yourself. You tried to make it so textbook.”  
  
Ardeth was wordless, looking pleadingly at Ixchel until she turned her back on him again. She let out a long breath, shutting her eyes. Behind her lids, she could see his face, incessant in the blackness. At that point, all she wanted was to be alone. “Did you even _try_ to leave the Temple?” she asked, edging toward venomous. “You weren’t with the others when they came.”  
  
“I was injured—badly,” Ardeth said, his voice drawn out by strain. “Don’t you think I wanted to—”  
  
He was cut off by Ixchel’s eyes, burrowing into him as she turned halfway. She breathed, exhaling the vitriol from her system so she could speak clearly. “Thank you for all you’ve taught me, Ardeth.”  
  
Her finality struck him dumb. At last, he took his leave of her, words piled behind his lips but none leaving them. Ixchel had turned away before Ardeth left her room, but the click of the door shutting behind him brought her a sweeping relief. She leaned heavily upon her desk, her chest heaving in a long sigh. Slowly, she turned to look to her left, her eyes falling on Rosalie’s bed.  
  
Gingerly, she sat on the edge of the bed, disturbing the soft, neatly made sheets. She swallowed hard, only to find herself choked up. “Shit,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her forehead, leaning over her knees. “Please be okay.” Her quiet prayer couldn’t break through the nebulous block put between Rosalie and those who loved her—no matter how hard Ixchel tried, every time, nothing would work. She opened her eyes and lazily looked toward the chronometer beside her bed. Almost time for group practice.  
  
She prayed to the Force instead: “Please let her be okay.”


	9. nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Sexual violence.

Rosalie dreamed of the desert. Hot, course sand slipped through her fingers onto a dry, hard-packed stretch of ground, cracked open with fissures. The sun—no, the _suns_ —beat down on her with a harshness unmatched. She longed for water, for snow, but she received only grains of sand beneath her tongue and between her teeth in response. Dunes stretched for miles in every direction; the only thing breaking up the landscape was a cluster of squat buildings, raised bumps in the distance. She felt drawn to them, tempted to soldier forward through the unbearable heat and see what lay there that she wanted so badly. The cloudless sky turned from vibrant blue to the wild, fiery red-orange of sundown with a blink of her eyes, she felt the hard leather of a saddle between her thighs, an indescribable thirst, and with the next, she awoke.  
  
For a moment, the feeling of cushions and blankets beneath her was comforting, but as soon as she opened her eyes to see the ceiling of her prison, she sat up with alert. She raised a hand to her throat, the thirst she felt in her dream so real she was surprised to find she craved no water. With slow, creeping realization, remembrance of her reality as the haze of sleep faded, she moved her hand up to her face, expecting to feel the crust of dried blood. But she felt nothing. Rosalie’s heart pounded, and she crossed the room to the vanity, where the mirror showed her a perfectly clean, freshly washed version of herself. Her hair was tied back in a single plait, not a single strand stained red. She was wearing her robes again, a sight that took the breath from her.  
  
She stumbled back from the mirror, hand laid over her stomach. Her lightsaber hung from her hip, glinting in the morning sunlight.  
  
Shélin was at her door before she recognized the presence. Rosalie stared at the door for a long moment before she heard the lord’s voice: “May I come in?” Shélin asked, softer than she’d perhaps ever spoken to Rosalie before.  
  
It took Rosalie a moment to bring her voice back from wherever it had been hiding. “Yes. Come in.”  
  
The younger of Shélin’s aides opened the door for her, smiling gently at his liege as she nodded for him to stay outside. She crossed the threshold holding two clear glasses in her hands, tall and textured with veins of green-colored glass. Inside was a dark brownish red liquid, steam coming off of it in wispy tendrils caught by the sun. Her sheer black dress was adorned with large, colorful birds in flight. Rosalie’s eyes were captured by their blue, orange, and yellow embroidered feathers before Shélin extended one of the glasses to her.  
  
“Good morning,” Shélin spoke through a sigh.  
  
Rosalie clasped the glass between both of her hands, glad for the warmth. “Morning.” The liquid smelled similar to caf, but accented with a spice she was unfamiliar with. At length, she caught Shélin’s discomfort and discontent, the aura surrounding her tinted with unease. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Oh, I’m fine,” Shélin said, walking to the balcony doors and pulling them open with her free hand. Rosalie drank in the summer breeze that flowed into the room. Shélin’s gaze settled over the rooftops of Zlesia, her shoulders heaving with a deep breath. “They found bodies this morning. Six.”  
  
Rosalie blinked. “Bodies?”  
  
“Piled on top of each other like logs,” Shélin said, sitting on the cushiony sofa beside the exit to the balcony. “All of them killed with a single wound to the heart—and all with circles of skin missing from their foreheads.”  
  
Rosalie set her glass down on a glass-topped end table, moving closer to the sofa. “The same people who hurt those girls.”  
  
Shélin nodded, her face drawn. Circles shaded the undersides of her eyes. “I’m not sure of their point,” she said dryly, taking a sip. “Why leave those girls alive if they were just going to killed eight others?”  
  
“Eight?”  
  
“Oh, I haven’t told you everything.” Shélin gave a sarcastic smile. “At the crest of the Rosling Bridge, that crosses the Rosling _River_ —the river that separates the richer districts of Zlesia from the poorer—there were two more bodies.” The smile faded, and she casually rested her elbow on the sofa’s arm, sinking her fingers into her hair. “Two members of my personal guard. Not my First Guards; they were with me all night. But my secondaries, Talissa and Beck, they'd been surveying the entrances to the palace.”  
  
Rosalie found herself at a loss. “Shélin, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“We were never close. Your First Guards, those are the ones you know. Who stay with you, talk to you, advise you if need be. But secondaries, you never really grow to know them well. They stand behind you, not at your sides. But all the same . . . I was silly to think this was just an attack on Enric.”  
  
Words failed Rosalie as she folded her arms close to her ribs, eyes averting to the floor. She was still shaking from her dream of the desert, from waking cleaned and braided and redressed, and now the Force effectively caught her up on the disturbance she had missed. A knot of combined suffering that great would typically rouse her from any slumber, but she hadn’t stirred an inch.  
  
“On top of the bodies of my guards,” Shélin continued, “there was a note. It said: ' _Step down, the both of you, or the blood will never stop flowing. You will find new bodies of your supporters every morning until you do. What country would want lords who would rather stay in power than see their loyalists safe?_ ' It's an insurgence—and not like any we've had before.”  
  
Rosalie moved to sit beside her on the sofa, arms still a protective shield over her torso. “How so?” she asked, instilling a necessary strength in her voice.  
  
Shélin met Rosalie’s eyes, almost lackadaisical. “Every other time someone has opposed a power on Corisdor, at least that I can remember, they've shown their faces; they've said their names. Whomever this is, we have no idea. We have patrolmen combing the city at night, and still, they manage to pile bodies on top of each other with no one seeing them do it. It won't be long before the people get courageous, too. This rebellion is clearly fighting for them; they'll see that and rally to their invisible sides and _finally_ stand up to the power.” She rose her glass in a mock toast, a sardonic laugh coming up with venom.  
  
“But why target you?” Rosalie asked, trying to settle the uneasiness of her stomach. “I don’t know your politics well, but you seem a fine leader to me. Why not just direct their insurgence toward him?”  
  
“Because I married him,” Shélin answered easily. “They can see that I feed them, house them, and clothe them all day long until it's convenient to only see my marriage. Then, I'm just as worthy of treason as he is.”  
  
Rosalie tried to listen, tried to detach herself from the hurricane going on inside her head, but she was always pulled back in by its violent winds. A rebellion on a small world in the back cupboard of the galaxy seemed an insignificant worry in comparison to the implications behind her newfound cleanliness, and the sand she could still taste in her mouth. She couldn’t even focus her eyes for very long, the room around her blurring out and sliding farther away.  
  
“What am I doing,” Shélin said suddenly, “piling all of this upon you?” She lay a hand on Rosalie’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. You came here to get away from troubles on your homeworld, and here I am, giving you the troubles of mine.”  
  
Rosalie made herself smile politely, shaking her head. “It’s all right.”  
  
“It isn’t,” Shélin insisted. She sat up straight and set her glass down on a table beside the sofa. “Come have lunch with me. I have some visitors from Sora coming this afternoon—should have arrived already, actually. And they would be very interested to meet you.”  
  
The perpetual knot in Rosalie’s throat halted her answer just long enough to look like she was hesitating.  
  
“ _Come_ , please. It’s something entirely pleasant and not at all related to turmoil,” Shélin said, taking Rosalie’s limp hand and standing up. Her skirt swished, and through its sheerness, past the embroidered birds, Rosalie could just see the lord’s bare legs, up to the tops of her thighs. Her cheeks flushed, and she steadied her eyes on Shélin’s face. “And most of all, absolutely scrumptious.”  
  
Rosalie pushed herself off the sofa’s soft cushions. Contradicting the twisting of her stomach, she said, “Lunch sounds wonderful.”  
  
“Good.” Shélin wrapped her arm around Rosalie’s as they approached the heavy double doors. As the former lay her free hand upon the handle, she paused. “Are you all right, Rosalie?” She canted her keen eyes upward to meet the violaceous ones that blinked at her. “I thought I felt you tremble.”  
  
“Yes, I’m—”  
  
“Was he with you last night?”  
  
The question wasn’t a shock, but its reverberations made the air acidic to breathe. Rosalie averted her eyes to the blue-and-white painted patterns before her. “He was,” she said.  
  
Shélin sighed through her nose, flexing her fingers on the metallic handle. “Did he hurt you?”  
  
“No,” Rosalie answered quickly.  
  
Flashes of him flickered behind her eyelids, and she was thankful for Shélin turning to open the door when her face betrayed the sickness that washed over her. She felt the echo of his hand on her abdomen, and his fingernails on her thigh. His lips on her neck, gentler than before. She felt the heat in the Force of him savoring her body, the look of her supine and under his induced unconsciousness. She’d seen similar things before, in her nightmares. She knew she wasn’t recollecting a bad dream when the phantom warmth of his possessive hand spread across her chest, and the memory of his mouth just below her navel.  
  
She felt vomit rise in her throat as he fed her the images, the feelings upon her flesh as though they were happening right then. A thousand insects crawled across her skin, and the urge to scrub herself raw was broken by Shélin’s tight grasp of her arm. An intensely floral, herbal smell filled the air as two large, glass doors opened into a garden. Rosalie hadn’t even felt herself move through the palace; she didn’t hear Shélin’s conversation nor recognize her own responses, if she had given any. As her awareness returned, the grotesque display in her mind’s eye stopped playing as he let her know, in their wordless language of the Force only they spoke, that he had stopped there. The rest was what she already knew: he cleaned her of blood, clothed her, and braided her hair all as if she were a doll. His doll. His plaything to make malleable and bare whenever he wanted. The way he stressed how he had held himself back dug so deeply into Rosalie’s gut she felt the bile come up higher.  
  
“You’re going to love the gardens,” Shélin said. Her voiced sounded like it was spoken from the opposite side of an aquarium. “It’s too gorgeous a summer day to stay inside.”  
  
Rosalie forced her eyes to focus on the scenery around her, splendorous and verdant beauty curated with splashes of blues, purples, oranges, and yellows. Small white clovers lined the spaces between pale blue cobbles. They came upon a small eating area on a dais, underneath a trellis blanketed by hanging flowers and vines, lined by small lemon trees in painted pots. Two girls stood from their intricate, cushioned chairs when their eyes fell on their lord. They both had bright blonde hair and bare midriffs, their similar dresses different only in color and the designs of their bodices—the first one, Tenia Zhang, was clad in a soft pink, her bodice laced up tight enough to show considerable cleavage; the second, and most devout in formality, Atea Noth, bore a shimmering golden ensemble, her bodice embroidered with small flowers. Both of their hairstyles were halfway up, tied in rope braids that circled behind their heads, embellished with silver and gold beads that glittered when they moved.  
  
“My girls,” Shélin said lovingly, enveloping them both in an informal hug.  
  
Lacking Shélin’s support, Rosalie found herself surprisingly balanced—stiff with fear.  
  
“We’ve missed you so much,” Tenia said.  
  
Atea echoed, “So very much.”  
  
“And I you,” Shélin said. Holding the girls’ hands in her own, she turned over her shoulder. “Rosalie. These are two of my dearest friends from home.”  
  
Rosalie’s smile was automatic, a fortunate byproduct of her upbringing. Her insides whirred and screamed, but she composed her facade well enough to greet the southern girls with grace. She had been practicing outward contentment since she arrived in the Jedi Temple. Too many times had she been bearing the bloody storm inside her head when a Jedi Knight or Master greeted her in the halls, and she gave them the cool, even, peaceful trainee they had expected without flaw. In an old gesture she thought she’d outgrown, Rosalie clasped her hands together at her waist, fingers laced between one another, to assuage their shaking.  
  
“Atea, Tenia—Rosalie is a _princess_ from Alderaan, a planet all the way across the galaxy.” Shélin’s tone was almost comically grandiose, but the girls were taken.  
  
“A princess? What does that mean?”  
  
“How far away?”  
  
“Now, now,” Shélin laughed, “let’s sit down before we have any interviews.”  
  
As soon as they took their seats, several servants approached the table, setting down small plates of finger foods and cups of icy water, slices of lemon floating inside. Rosalie’s gentle expression remained, but she felt constricted, the two new registers blocking her into the confined space of the trellis. She could get up and leave any time she wanted, but she felt chained down all the same.  
  
The trajectory of the girls’ gazes did not go over her head, either. With a naïve curiosity, Atea asked, “Does everyone look like you where you’re from?”  
  
Tenia clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, picking up a small square of bread from her plate. “They _must_ , Atea; what a stupid question.”  
  
Atea laughed good-heartedly. “I’m only asking! It’s not everyday you come to Carro and see someone so… _different_ , in the very best way. In Western Terra, Lord Hevra has very deep blue eyes, but—yours are the color of a _twilight sky_ , and they’re just wonderful.”  
  
Rosalie had to keep her brow from furrowing, taken aback by her sunniness. There was something refreshing about it. “Thank you,” she said, leveling out her voice with great effort. Not unkindly, she added, “You’re very poetic.”  
  
“And very open-minded,” Shélin added, tracing the rim of her glass with the pad of her index finger. “A rare currency here.”  
  
“Unfortunately so, Your Grace,” Tenia said. “Is it true the opposite is what’s caused the…revolts this week?”  
  
Following a rueful sidelong glance, Shélin made a flippant gesture. “It does seem that way. But I don’t want either of you to worry; we have this under control.”  
  
Rosalie looked at her, the lie catching on a hitch in her head.  
  
“I hope so,” Atea said. Her aquiline nose scrunched up with her look of disgust. “What monsters. So cowardly, not even daring to show their faces.”  
  
Ice clinked against glass as Rosalie sipped the lemon water, its chill spreading through her torso and numbing the restlessness of her gut. “You’re sitting in the home of a monster right now,” she said, setting down the tall glass with a decided _thud_. Three pairs of perplexed, and just slightly unsettled, eyes fell upon her. “A monster’s garden. Eating a monster’s food. Taking room and board inside a monster’s dwelling.” Rosalie’s face remained softly firm, looking between either girl in turn. “A monster whose face you know. Yet you seem awfully calm about that in comparison to the faceless ones outside.”  
  
For a beat, Atea and Tenia looked bewildered, but even such uncommonly kind Corisdorians knew how to lacquer themselves over with feigned assuredness and confidence. The latter took to an incredulous, short laugh. “Lord Arroyo isn’t—”  
  
“I’m not talking about Lord Arroyo.”  
  
Silence befell the table. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves which surrounded them, and carried sweet smells so rich they were nearly overbearing. Shélin cast Rosalie a lasting look, nonplussed, but the latter did not return it.  
  
“We feel safe here,” Atea said at last, picking up a delicate pastry between her fingers. “We’re not traitors, nor criminals, nor unsavory at all. There’s no reason for us to be afraid.” She took a bite, and glob of orange, translucent jam spilled from the dessert’s open wound, onto a small painted plate. “Besides, monster is a…bit of a strong word, if I say so.”  
  
Tenia nodded through a sip of water. “Perhaps a difference of culture, you know,” she said, more so to her friend than to the one whose opinion she was opposing. “Maybe princesses rule more softly than lords do.”  
  
Rosalie had to suppress a sarcastic smile. “You approve,” she said, her hackles risen, “of how _Lord Kelrian_ governs Carro.” Not a question.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if we approve,” Tenia said, her tone growing more cautious with each word she passed, shifting uncomfortably as she eyed her salad of small, pointed green leaves. “Does it, Shélin?”  
  
Shélin raised her brow in a regal expression, taking a large white berry from a bowl near the center of the table. “No, my dear,” she said, resting the berry upon her lower lip, fighting not to shoot Rosalie a disapproving glare, “it doesn’t. But we shouldn’t be talking of politics. Tell me, girls: how is my city?”  
  
Rosalie’s focus faded out again, the attention dramatically steered away from her leaving her momentarily weightless. She shut her eyes against the ensuing vertigo, and found a heat at the base of her ribcage, a small flame that hadn’t been there before. She recognized the anger and doused it, breathing in and out the sickly sweet air. Rosalie didn’t know if she was drawing attention to herself, nor did she care. The perspective granted by shutting out the brilliant flora and bubbly guests allowed her to see just how little the three women she sat with had to do with her, and she them—and she the rebellion they faced. Shélin was a rare type of generous and kind when she didn’t have to be—a companion Rosalie was lucky to find—and tried to shield the poor offworld girl from horrors of which she had assumed her naïve. But Rosalie had nothing to do with Corisdor. It only happened to be where Enric had fled after he washed her life in red, and where he happened to stay.  
  
Had she been there on assignment, arrived there in her own agency rather than dragged by her hair, Rosalie would have thought it was beautiful. Had she seen its feudal society for what it was before Enric stained that sanguine, as well, she would have thought it fascinating. Had she met Shélin any other way, with her flashy dress and acidic wit ringing almost warmly familiar, they would likely have made true friends.  
  
But none of that was true; none of that was possible. No outcome good or kind or amiable stood a chance when Enric Kelrian was the reason she was there.  
  
Her eyelids eased open. Passage of time was only a vague concept to her in that moment, represented by the shadows slanted just slightly more to one direction and the disarray of the luncheon selections. Their voices remained at the back of her recognition as the tips of her fingers began to tingle, in tandem with the skin along the nape of her neck. She stretched her mind to hone in on the small, distant pins of light, feeling her mind float from the flesh of her body as she did. But just as soon, she fell back down as if pulled by her sleeve, and she felt the phantom sensation of wet cloth on her mouth—followed by the dampened pads of diligent fingers.  
  
Rosalie’s eyes were at last wide open. She gripped the sides of the chair to steady the rattling bones in her chest.  
  
“Are you all right?” came Shélin’s voice, with startling clarity. The weight of her hand upon Rosalie’s arm was oppressive and heavy.  
  
One of the girls clicked her tongue. They both looked sympathetic. “We’re all shaken up about this,” Atea said, solemnly stirring a small metal spoon in a cup of tea. Tiny granules of sugar caught the sun as they swirled and melted. “Tenia and I were almost too scared to make the ride up here.”  
  
“Please excuse me,” Rosalie said, stretching her mouth into a polite smile. She stood from the table, the others following suit in courtesy. “I’m going to take a walk, if nobody minds. It was so lovely meeting you two.”  
  
“Will you be attending the Poplar Ball, Rosalie?” Atea asked.  
  
“The what?”  
  
“A formal dance celebrating the summer solstice,” Shélin answered. “Accompanying the Poplar festival, of course. You should join us; it’s wonderfully fun.”  
  
Rosalie refreshed her simper, despite the uneasiness of her insides. “I wouldn’t know how to dress—nor how to dance.”  
  
“Oh, but do consider it,” Tenia said, girlishly pleading. “You can’t come to Carro in summertime and pass it up.”  
  
“Let’s let her think about it,” Shélin said, sweetly. “Enjoy your walk, Rosalie.”  
  
Rosalie gave the table a polite nod and escaped into the expanse of the gardens. She walked down a wide pathway paved with the same blue cobblestones, the soles of her boots rhythmically clicking on the smooth rock. The sun warmed her skin welcomingly. She breathed in the scented air, carried on a breeze that disturbed the skinny braid that fell over her right shoulder. Her hand lay over her stomach; what liquid she had taken threatened to come back up. Before Rosalie could linger too long on assuaging her nausea, a nearby presence caught her attention.  
  
Her head swung up, and above her on a higher tier of the gardens walked Mykal Zeras. As she noticed him, he felt the current of her attention in the Force. Something shook deep inside of him as he met her eyes. A sodden look weighed down his features—but she could tell it had been there since long before he saw her. Rosalie felt her face harden; Mykal averted his gaze and kept walking.

* * *

Quiet whirs of mechanical gears filled the silence surrounding the table as Verena fiddled with her spoon. Gloved cybernetic fingers twirled the utensil in the bowl of hearty vegetable stew, uneaten and cooling.  
  
Through a bite of hard-crusted bread, Thalos E’rron chided her. “You still need to eat, you know.”  
  
They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on one of the several long tables in their selected refectory. They’d caught the latter half of dinner, so there was plenty of space along the benches. But they still sat closely enough for their knees to touch underneath the table.  
“I just feel so fucking useless,” Verena said, moving a slice of carrot from one side of the bowl to the other.  
  
Thalos considered running the palm of his hand down the length of Verena’s hair, loose down her back and tangled at the ends, but decided against it, as there were still a good number of people in the dining hall. Instead, he touched the underside of her arm where the artificial portion of the limb ended, just above her elbow, out of sight. “I know,” he said. “But think about how mad Rosalie’s gonna be when she finds out you didn’t eat your soup.”  
  
Verena snorted, smiling despite herself. “What, you’re gonna tattle on me?”  
  
“I absolutely am. The minute she gets back, I’m gonna tell her all about how you refused to eat the best meal of the week.” He wagged the last bit of his bread at her, entirely disapproving. “She won’t like that at all.”  
  
She let out a real laugh, albeit a short one, and shook her head. “How will she ever forgive me?” She toyed with the heel of bread on the plate beside her stew, tapping its crust as if to test its resilience. Whenever they were served stew and bread, Verena always pawned off her portion of the latter on either Rosalie or Anyarah, neither of whom could ever get enough of the stuff. She couldn’t stand the stuff baked in the Temple, not after going with Thalos to a family-run bakery in CoCo Town.  
  
A silent beat passed uninterrupted. Quiet clamor and blinking of dinnerware filled the room, underlined by Verena’s unease emerging past their shortlived levity.  
  
“She’s okay, Vee,” Thalos said, sincerity taking the place of humor. “I know this is what everyone’s saying, but it’s true: it’s Rosalie. What can anyone do to her?”  
  
Verena cast him a gentle, though cynical, glare. “You talk like she’s a god or something.” At last, she took a spoonful of lukewarm stew. “Like she’s invincible.”  
  
“She’s more invincible than any of us,” Thalos offered with a shrug.  
  
A starchy vegetable stuck to the roof of her mouth as she considered. _She always hates that_. Rosalie had been born on a pedestal, and acknowledgment of it grated on her. She didn’t want to be seen as higher, or more powerful, or more invincible than anyone else. It amused Verena, to a point, how the Chosen One could be _annoyed_ at people raising them up. But she wasn’t apathetic; Rosalie was a private person, eternally uncomfortable with fame and recognition.  
  
“You haven’t seen him,” she said, her voice weighted.  
  
Thalos’ sense tightened. “I know.”  
  
“It’s like,” Verena continued, her eyes drifting off beyond the far wall they appeared to rest upon, “I know I’m just a Padawan, but…it’s as if I was nothing. He threw me around like a _ragdoll_ ; practically _played_ with me instead of fighting me. I’m not powerless against darksiders; I’ve faced them before. He’s different. Stronger, somehow, I don’t know.”  
  
Thalos’ hand returned to its post upon the underside of Verena’s arm, stoking the spot comfortingly. “Stronger than Rosalie Seeker?”  
  
Verena made herself smile as she looked down at her hands. “She’s just a Padawan, too, you know.” Her eyes went distant again, and Thalos gently stroked her sleeve. “He didn’t feel like a person who’s been training for however long. He felt like an entity. Like a manifestation of something.”  
  
“The dark side does that,” Thalos said, tugging on her to pull her out of her reverie. “The mystery it shrouds people in is part of what makes them powerful. But Enric Kelrian is still just flesh and blood. He can be hurt.” The rest lay in the air between them, spoken neither in words nor in silent communication, but in the clear trajectory of Thalos’ statement: _He can be killed_.  
  
A lock of light brown hair falling over her shoulder was the only indication Verena herself received that she had shaken her head. “So can she.”

* * *

Every petal had been touched by him. The vaguest essence of him was left upon every leaf and branch, floating on particles of bright orange pollen stirred loose from a laden blossom by a breeze of wind. Nothing Rosalie looked upon was without his aura dulling its beauty with shadows. Vibrant flowers looked gray on their twisting vines, and ripe berries on the ground beneath their bushes smelled sour. The gardens reminded her of the natural bastions around the Aldera Royal Palace, but not nearly as magical. She tried to imagine the shrubs she walked through capped with frosty crowns of new snow, but could only see them wilted by rain. She ached, just for a moment, for the sweet aroma of starblossoms to cancel out the Sapphire Palace’s ubiquitous zest of citrus.  
  
Rosalie closed her eyes, reaching into the depths of her memory to find the sugar-sweet, fleshy fruit that was ever-plentiful in her childhood. Saul had once picked a ripe plant bare and came inside bearing a wealth of them, piled into a woven basket. Right nearby the spot they grew was where, she’d been told, her mother had found an arralute—a plant which, according to folklore, predicted the birth of a child—not long before Rosalie was conceived. That arralute was her baby rattle, once she was big enough to hold it properly. She could still hear the clatter of the trapped seeds inside the flower’s dried, faded petals, and see it laid atop a small, feathery blanket in her keepsake chest.  
  
The spaces between her ribs were still sticky and full with the pleasant swell of nostalgia when she was pulled from her daydream, the shadows around her returning to view, casting away the warm glow she had found so briefly.  
  
Before she came back to her senses fully, Rosalie had expected to see Shélin round the wall of adolescent flowering trees, but she knew her assumption was wrong before her visitor came into view.  
  
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Mykal’s voice traveled the distance between them softly, with a kindness that contradicted what anyone would reasonably expect. His hands wrung together, covered up to his second knuckles by dark cloth wrappings.  
  
“You’re not interrupting,” Rosalie said.  
  
She knew she should feel uneasy around him, perhaps even threatened. Even as he neared her side, her guard was up but she knew she wouldn’t have to act. He was no longer clad in the woolen robes she had last seen him in, made in a similar configuration to his master’s. Perhaps it lent to his neutral aura, lacking the facade of Enric Kelrian’s apprentice and appearing simply as a man. He shrugged the high collar of his well-loved jacket back off his jawline, folding his arms tightly. He didn’t even have a lightsaber with him.  
  
“Shélin seems to have taken a great interest in you,” Mykal said, looking out over the same stone railing Rosalie leaned her hip upon. Everything looked peaceful enough from up there.  
  
“She has,” Rosalie said, resting the palm of her hand on the warm stone. “Why does her interest pique yours?”  
  
Mykal’s lips perked up at the corners, just slightly. “Amusement, mostly.” A soft kick of wind rustled the waves in his hair, and he reflexively tucked one side back.  
  
Rosalie looked at him sidelong. “Shélin’s concern for me in a dangerous place is a source of amusement for you?”  
  
He returned her gaze incredulously. “What _amuses_ me isn’t your predicament—quite the contrary. I don’t tend to find joy in this sort of thing.”  
  
Rosalie held his eyes. “Then you’re in the wrong line of work, Mykal.”  
  
To their mutual surprise, he smiled. It was the briefest baring of his teeth and the most translucent ghost of a laugh, but it was enough to take Rosalie aback for a moment. The crinkles beside his eyes were humanizing. “Well, a job is a job, isn’t it?”  
  
The longer they stood together, the more the tense knots in Rosalie’s chest loosened. If she looked into him, reached inside of him to examine his intricacies and nuance, she imagined the dark coating on his being sloughing away, thick enough for Enric to accept as truth but also to fool him after long enough. Maybe trails of darkness tainted what was underneath the shell, too, spots of irreparable corruption tarnishing what was otherwise good. But at the end of the day, no matter what comprised his soul, Rosalie didn’t need to reach into the Force to feel his conflict, the ripping apart of his conscience in favor of two sides equally tempting. A surface-level iciness staving off the heat of compassion that flickered still within.  
  
She wondered, idly, if Mykal knew how easily the heart on his sleeve was read—if Enric had ever taught him how to conceal whatever warmth he couldn’t kill off. Or if he just didn’t mind if she saw it—if he wanted her to, even. Rosalie didn’t know enough about him to decide if what she felt was sympathy or empathy—or if she should be feeling either in the first place.  
  
“I’m sorry about what happened,” Mykal said, suddenly. As soon as conversation started up again, the pathways of Rosalie’s speculation seemed to dissipate.  
  
“What?” she asked.  
  
“Last night.”  
  
Rosalie averted her eyes to the sea of rooftops below them, her fingers curling to touch her palms. Her chest wanted to constrict and tighten, but she made herself take a deep breath. “Did he enjoy telling you about that?”  
  
“He doesn’t tell me about the things he does,” Mykal said quickly, shaking his head. “I just knew.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“It was hard not to feel.”  
  
Rosalie’s teeth clenched together. She assuaged the quickening of her heart. “What did you come to talk to me about? Shélin, or your master’s atrocities?”  
  
Mykal swallowed. “Both, actually. Seeing as she thinks she’s some sort of barrier between you and the latter.”  
  
Rosalie shook her head. “That she does.”  
  
“She’s keen enough,” Mykal said, adjusting his interlocked arms, “one would think she’d know how much fun he has stringing her along.”  
  
“I wonder if he knows how much fun she has doing the same thing.”  
  
Another smile, though a shadow of the first, made Mykal’s hollow cheeks seem less gaunt for a moment. “Regardless, if she thinks simply standing between the two of you is going to do anything but get herself killed, she’s a fool.”  
  
Rosalie sighed, long and quiet, closing her eyes for a few seconds. “I have wondered what exactly she has planned, besides taking me to festivals and balls.”  
  
“Oh, she’s taking you to the Poplar Ball?” Mykal asked, mock enthusiasm lifting his brow. “How fun.”  
  
Beside herself, Rosalie chuckled. “I can’t wait to see what dress she picks out for me.”  
  
“Oh, how _will_ you do your hair…” Mykal shook his head dramatically. “I just hope her obsession with keeping you out of harm’s way doesn’t end up pushing you into it.”  
  
Rosalie blinked at him. “Why do you hope that?”  
  
Mykal bristled. A muscle in his jaw feathered, but he snuffed the resentment that had flared in his sense rather quickly. “Not everyone on Corisdor favors the violent outcome.”  
  
“You can forgive me of presuming it of you.”  
  
Mykal looked at her, and the same cast fell over his face which had aboard Enric’s ship. That look of awe, just behind the veneer of aloof indifference his role demanded of him. He averted his eyes from Rosalie’s quickly, as if looking her way a moment longer would burn him. “I suppose I can,” he said, solemn. Words lingered on the edge of his tongue, burgeoning at the roof of his mouth and just behind his teeth, but he bit down on them.  
  
Without warning, it was like a chill had descended upon the summer’s day. The sun still shone, but its warmth didn’t reach them. The icy blanket over them was one they both recognized. They were kindred in the sharp jolts they felt in their chests, the fidgeting of their fingers as they adjusted under the weight of a disembodied acknowledgment that hadn’t been there before.  
  
Mykal’s hands tightened into fists. “Trust your instincts, Rosalie,” he said, turning away. He had become rigid and cold. “Not hers.”  
  
Rosalie turned as he did, and followed him for a step, as if drawn by a magnet. “What?”  
  
He stopped, though he didn’t face her again. Even Rosalie could feel his reins being pulled taut, his urge to buck against them. “I’ll see you at the ball,” was the last he said before leaving the gardens, beckoned by the silent call of his master.

* * *

Rosalie’s head pounded, a deep, twisting cramp at the base of her skull throbbing with every shine of light or gentle movement around her. It was the same kind of headache she would wake up with after her nightmares, when they were particularly bad. Only by the time she’d gotten some caf in her and immersed herself in the company of her friends would they allay.  
  
However, in the company of none but Shélin Arroyo—well-intentioned and commiserative she was, but nary the kind of friend for whom Rosalie pined—and her array of ostentatious clothing choices, her head seemed keen to keep on its course of agony. It always left her worse for wear, the more personal and prolonged invasions of her mind, but it had been a long time since the aftereffects had manifested so physically, so painfully.  
  
“Do you have a favorite color?”  
  
Shélin had several dresses laid out upon the oversized bed in her room. It was thick with luxurious blue-and-gold blankets, its twisted white posts suspending a satin canopy high above. There were several furry pillows piled up by the headboard, some gray, some white. The room itself was huge and beautiful, as sunny and grandly decorated as the rest of the palace, and seemed to house only Shélin. Enric’s essence was everywhere, projected or psychometric, but Rosalie believed only the former was true for that room. She wondered if it was commonplace for marriages on Corisdor to accommodate separate rooms, or if Enric liked to sleep in the same place he kept his toys.  
  
It took her a moment to think if she _did_ have a favorite color. “I like yellow,” she said, sitting with her elbow resting upon the topmost of her crossed legs. She kept her head propped up with her knuckles supporting her chin. Decidedly informal, but neither exhaustion nor exasperation, much less a combination of the two, fed the will to be wholly proper.  
  
“Yellow,” Shélin parroted, pausing in her adjustment of a layered skirt. “Why yellow?”  
  
Rosalie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. _My sister painted me a yellow flower once; my father wore a yellow shimmersilk blouse sometimes; it reminds me of the sun and being warm_. “I like gold, too.”  
  
“Now, _gold_ I can work with.” Shélin pointed a heavily jeweled finger in Rosalie’s direction. “How do you feel about showing your body?”  
  
Rosalie felt herself stiffen. “I’d rather not.”  
  
Shélin held up a heavily embroidered dark gold dress, its bodice connected to its skirt by a thin see-through panel. The sleeves were long, though sheer save for even more intricate beading and design. “Why not?” Shélin asked, as if surprised by her answer. “Is it customary to cover up on Alderaan?”  
  
“Not specifically.” Rosalie sat up, gripping the edge of her chair. “I just don’t—”  
  
“Well, this one isn’t too much, hm?” She held up the golden number, the skirt feathering out in layers of unencumbered fabric. Shélin perked up her eyebrows. “Not very mobile for dancing, but since you’re not acquainted with Corisdorian dances, anyway…”  
  
Rosalie stood up, wincing, hoping that moving around a bit might abate the pain. She reached out and held one of the sleeves in her hand, feeling the smooth embroidery that must have taken weeks to craft. “Forgive me, Shélin, but is a formal dance a good idea, at a time like this?”  
  
Shélin gave an impossibly airy shrug of a single shoulder. “Why wouldn’t it be?”  
  
“I only mean, with everything that’s happening—”  
  
“Festive traditions are what the people need right now,” Shélin said, as casual as though she weren’t addressing the blood slicking the streets of her city. “Allowing these traitors to disrupt the Poplar Ball would be as disastrous as another attack taking place, believe me.”  
  
“I don’t mean for morale,” Rosalie said, a bit firmly. “I mean for safety.”  
  
Shélin moved her eyes from the dress to meet Rosalie’s. The velvety gaze of her smoke-gray eyes was softly curious. “What do you mean?”  
  
It was difficult to ascertain whether Shélin wasn’t putting the pieces together out of willful ignorance, or because she had truly never encountered something like this before. “You and many of your noble subjects, together in one room?” Rosalie folded her arms. “All drinking and eating the same things, confined to one space.”  
  
Shélin chuckled as she shook her head, loose black ringlets bouncing about her shoulder blades. “You sound paranoid.”  
  
“I’m only saying,” Rosalie said, trying her best not to sound impatient, “that if I were an enemy who wanted you dead, a ballroom full of you and your most loyal subjects—easy to disguise myself in, with countless possibilities for assassination—would be most tempting.”  
  
Shélin was quiet for a moment, and released a long breath through her nose. “I hear what you’re saying, Rosalie,” she said. “But the brutality of their crimes thus far doesn’t inspire suspicion of such creativity.”  
  
“You don’t have to be creative to take advantage of such a glaring opportunity,” Rosalie countered.  
  
They held each other’s eyes for a good while, until Shélin looked back down at the dress. She held it by the shoulders in both hands, holding it out in front of herself. “I’m not canceling,” she said, resolute. “And I want you to be there when it turns out, at the end of the night, that nothing happened.”  
  
Rosalie found herself smiling, a wilting lift of the corners of her mouth. It wasn’t a happy one, though—pitying, more than anything.  
  
“Besides,” Shélin continued, “I’ll have a Jedi by my side to protect me, should they be _tempted_.”  
  
“Right,” Rosalie said, quiet, touching the bodice of the dress, imagining herself in it. A portion of the chest was exposed, but the high split collar was a comfort. “You know, I don’t _hope_ I’m right.”  
  
“I know, darling. It’s good to look at things from that point of view sometimes.” She held the dress up to Rosalie’s body, lining up the garment’s silhouette with her own. “But please just _try_ to have fun until something actually goes wrong.”


End file.
